


Making a Hero

by dracusfyre



Series: Love and War [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Explicit Sexual Content, I'm Sorry, M/M, based on another prompt fill, blame them, implied victim blaming, then it hurts a lot, winteriron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-19 04:45:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11890305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracusfyre/pseuds/dracusfyre
Summary: Tony works his magic when not all of Bucky makes it back from Afghanistan.  But what can Bucky do when Tony doesn't return from Afghanistan at all?





	1. Building

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry to everyone that read this already, it posted by accident! D: Here, have this better, more complete version.

            Two weeks, eighteen emails, and one grainy video call later, Bucky got to go back to the States a little earlier than planned when an IED blew a hole in the inadequate armor of his HMV while they were driving in a convoy. 

            Tony found out through his best friend Rhodey, who pulled strings with his military coworkers to find out which hospital Bucky was being taken to and then broke a lot of protocols by telling Tony.  Tony wasn’t family, but luckily it was in New York and his name _was_ on one of the hospital wings, which got him as far as Bucky’s mom.  He knew he fumbled the introduction, trying to explain why she should let him in to see her son without getting too far into how they knew each other because hell, Tony didn’t even know if Bucky was out to his mom.

            In the end, after he ran out of words but right before he got desperate enough to offer money, she led him down the hall to the room where Bucky was sleeping, still sedated from being transported from Afghanistan by way of a military hospital in Germany.  Tony collapsed into the chair pulled next to the bed as soon as he saw Bucky, pale and still stained with blood and iodine from the efforts of the first responders.  The explosion had taken his arm and damaged part of his left side, including some raw looking burns on his face, but goddammit he was alive and breathing on his own and…Tony scrubbed his hands over his face and tried to calm his breathing, rocking a bit in the chair.

            “So you must be the one he’s been telling me about,” Mrs. Barnes said shrewdly, taking a seat on the other bed since apparently Tony had taken hers. “You two are dating?”

            Tony dragged his eyes away from Bucky to look at her in surprise.  “Um…kinda? I mean, we’ve talked about it, and I want to, but…”

            “Well I hope ‘kind of’ is going to be strong enough to survive what comes next, because if you can’t be there for him for the long haul you should leave now.”  Her bluntness made him wince.  

            “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” Tony said as he brushed Bucky’s hair back from his face with gentle fingers.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

            Bucky’s mom made a skeptical noise.  “You know, I recognize you.  From the gossip shows.  My son doesn’t really seem like your…type.”

            Tony made a face. _Type_.  She meant _female._ “If it's gossip, it’s bullshit,” he said. “And even if it weren’t, and I had dated all those people that they’ve said I did, it still wouldn’t matter.”

            “Ok, if you say so,” she said, raising her hands defensively.  “My son has been hurt before.  He deserves more than someone who is going to keep him a secret.”

            “He also deserves more than losing his VA benefits, his medals, and his rank because he likes dick but I don’t make the rules, do I?”  Tony said fiercely, hands tightening.  He made an effort to control his voice when all he wanted to do was yell about how unfair it all was.  It’s been two days since he’d picked up the phone to hear Rhodey say “First of all, Bucky’s alive,” and since then he hadn’t stopped to rest until he was here, and now that he could see Bucky breathing for himself all he wanted to do was cry with relief and then sleep.  Instead he swallowed around the lump in his throat and pressed his lips together tightly, busying himself by pulling his computer out of his bag.

            “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Barnes said softly.  “I shouldn’t have…”

            Tony shook his head.  “It’s not important right now.”

            “It is. I was rude, and I’m sorry.”

            Tony looked up and saw the sincerity in her eyes, and the tiredness, and the worry. “It’s ok.  It’s been…a long couple of days.”  

 

            Bucky woke up a few hours later.  Mrs. Barnes was sleeping on the other bed and Tony had taken over a significant portion of the flat surfaces in the room to work, answering what felt like an endless stream of emails.  So when Bucky shifted and tried to clear his throat, coughing painfully, he startled Tony so much he almost dropped his laptop. 

            “Bucky!” Tony jumped to his feet and leaned over the bed so that Bucky could see him.  “Hey, Bucky, there you are. Thank God.”

            “What…” Bucky struggled to sit up.  His voice was hoarse and painfully dry. “Tony?  What…Where am I?”

            “Hey, take it easy, lay down,” Tony said, trying to get him to calm down while one of the machines hooked up to him started to beep loudly.  He heard Mrs. Barnes sit up on the other bed. “There was an accident, you’re in the hospital.”

            “What happened? Tony?”  His voice started rising and a nurse came in, eyes full of concern.  Tony’s stomach dropped when he realized Bucky didn’t remember the explosion.

            “Mr. Barnes, my name is Jacob, and you need to calm down, ok? We don’t want you to hurt yourself-“

            “Tony, what’s going on? I don’t – “ Then Bucky saw the bandages on what was left of his arm, and Tony never wants to live through a moment like that ever again. He went completely still, and then his breathing got fast and his voice broke on a sob, and he was saying “Tony?” and then “Mom? What’s happening?” over and over, like he was begging.  Bucky’s mom was streaming tears and Tony was barely holding on.

            “Bucky, Bucky, calm down, it’s going to be ok –“ he kept trying to say around the tightness in his chest, but now Bucky was crying and the nurse looked like he was going to call in reinforcements. So Tony took a deep breath and barked, “ _Sergeant Barnes! Cool it, soldier!_ ” and at least got everyone’s attention. Bucky’s eyes were wild and his chest heaving, hand white-knuckled around the bedrail, but he was quiet. “Are you listening?” Tony said softly.  When Bucky swallowed and nodded Tony took his hand, not even wincing when Bucky gripped it painfully tight.

            “You were going out on a mission, and,” Tony took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice even, “and there was an explosion.  You were driving, and they think that the driver’s side tire triggered an IED.  The way the armor on the undercarriage of the vehicle was situated – “ Tony gestured, still holding Bucky’s hand while he made a ‘V’ shape in the air, “-channeled the force of the explosion…I got my hands on the pictures of the HMV.  My best guess is that you were probably resting your arm on the door, and...You were the only injury,” he added quickly when Bucky got that wild look again and opened his mouth.  “Your friends – your unit - are all okay.”  Tony kissed the back of his hand, avoiding the IV taped there.  “Your mom’s here, so I’m going to give you guys some time, ok? I’ll be right back.”

            Bucky nodded, tears streaming down his face as Tony released his hand and stepped back to give Mrs. Barnes room. Tony made it out the door before his knees almost gave out and he had to lean against the wall or he would go right to the floor.  His new driver/bodyguard, Harold, saw him from down the hall and started to trot towards him but Tony waved him away.  He focused on the cold wall behind his back, under his hands, and took deep breaths until he felt steadier.  When he scrubbed a hand over his face he was a little surprised to find that his cheeks were wet, so he dried them hastily and went in search of coffee.

 

            By the time Tony got back Bucky was already asleep again and Mrs. Barnes was pacing up and down the hallway on her phone, so Tony just pulled his chair closer to Bucky’s bed and picked up his laptop. Somewhere along the way though, though, he must have fallen asleep because the lights in room were dim when he woke up to the feeling of fingers running through his scalp.  Still half asleep, he made a happy noise before he woke up enough to realize that he had been drooling on his sleeve and that his back and neck were really unhappy with the position he’d fallen asleep in. 

            “Hey, handsome,” Bucky croaked into the relative silence as Tony lifted his head, smiling crookedly at what must be an epic case of bedhead.  Tony tried to make a face but yawned instead, trying to smooth down his hair.

            “Hey, Bucky. How are you feeling? Are you thirsty? The nurses said that-“ But Bucky was already nodding with a pained look on his face so Tony grabbed a cup of water that still had a few bits of ice floating in it and held the straw up to his mouth while he drank.  “Better?”

            Bucky nodded and lay back with a sigh, face pale and clammy.  Tony slid his hand into Bucky’s where it was lying on the covers and held it while Bucky stared at the ceiling, silent tears coursing down his cheeks and soaking into the pillow.  He rested his hand in Bucky’s for a while, torn between wanting to give him time to grieve and the incredibly ambitious and time sensitive proposal that had been keeping him awake since he’d first learned of Bucky’s injury.

            “Bucky?” Tony said hesitantly after a while.  Bucky wiped impatiently at his nose and Tony handed him a tissue.  “I know this is a lot to take in, but I need to talk to you about something, and it has to be before, well, before everything heals too much in your arm.”

            “Yeah? What?”

            “We have some stuff in the Stark R&D pipeline that I think…” Tony stopped and scrubbed a hand over his face before starting again.  “We are working on some pretty high tech stuff, along with some, I don’t know what to call it, medical breakthroughs that my father was working on during the war…the long story short is that I think I can fit you with an advanced prosthetic for your arm.  There’s a hot-shot neurosurgeon here who-“

            “I’m in,” Bucky interrupted.  “I don’t care, I want to give it a shot.”

            Tony hesitated, fiddling with one of the many wires hooking Bucky up to the machines next to the bed.  “Look, you’re on a lot of pain medication right now, and some would say that you, um, are not exactly _compos mentis_ -“

            “I said, I’m in.  Even if I have to go off pain meds to sign whatever the hell you need me to sign, I want to give it a shot.  I know my career in the military is over, and whatever the hell comes next is going to be a lot harder with only one arm, ok?  I got my family to think of, my mom and sister-“ Bucky’s breath hitched.  “I’m in, alright?”

            “Ok, ok.  I’ll get everything started.  There’s going to be a lot of paperwork, and…well, that’s not important right now.”  Tony shifted closer and took Bucky’s hand again. “You’re not going to be doing this alone, you know.  I’m the one designing the arm tech, and I’m not letting you out of those promises you made me in your emails.”  That earned him a ghost of a smile before Bucky sighed and closed his eyes.

            Tony haunted the hospital for as long as possible until eventually a critical amount of issues arose that required Tony’s actual physical presence, so after almost a day of procrastinating and watching Bucky sleep Tony finally had to go home and shower so he could make an appearance at Stark Industries.  He tried to return as soon as he was finished, but in the end it took him a couple of days before he could do more than just drop by for a few minutes.  He came down the hallway to find Mrs. Barnes sitting outside Bucky’s door, eyes red-rimmed and tired.

            In his pocket he felt his phone vibrate and heard a ding. He transferred his bag to his other shoulder and dug it out.  _Where are you? I came to the office looking for you._ “Dammit, Obie, I just got here,” he muttered tiredly.  _I’m at the hospital what did you need?_ He wrote back.

            Ding. _Have you looked at the new DOD contract?_

            Tony stopped walking again; Mrs. Barnes noticed him this time and gave him a polite smile and nod.  _We need to talk about that before I sign it._   He had barely hit send before Obie was calling him.  With a sigh he turned the ringer down and let it go to voicemail.

             “Hey, Mrs. Barnes.  Are you ok? Is Bucky-“

            “Everything’s fine,” she said, but the sniffles made her words unconvincing. “He’s sleeping so I thought I’d sit out here for a bit.”

            “Hey, when was the last time you got some sleep? _Good_ sleep?” When she frowned and took a moment to answer Tony knelt down in front of her and took one of her hands.  “Ma’am, you should go home and take a break.  Get a nice long shower in your own bathroom, get some sleep in your own bed.  I promise, everything is going to be better if you get some sleep.”

            “Oh, no,” she started protesting before he even finished talking.  “There’s no way I can leave him here-“

            “I’m going to be here for a while, so he won’t be alone.  In fact,” he stood and pulled her to her feet, waving Harold over from where he was lingering down the hallway.  “Take my driver.  That way if there’s an emergency you can come right back, ok? Just give Mr. Hogan here a little bit of water in a bowl or something and he’ll be fine,” he continued as soon as Harold was in earshot, suppressing a smile as Harold’s habitual scowl deepened.  “Bucky’s in good hands, I promise.”

            He followed her into the room as she puttered around and grabbed her things, giving Bucky a kiss on the forehead before leaving, smiling gratefully at Tony as she closed the door behind her.  As soon as the latch clicked Bucky opened one eye.  “She’s gone?”

            “Yeah.  I convinced her to go home for a few hours.”  Tony started clearing off some space for what he dubbed his portable office kit, acutely aware of the hypocrisy of telling Mrs. Barnes to get some rest when he hadn’t had more than a few hours of sleep at a time since he got the news about Bucky.

            “Thank God,” Bucky said with relief, running his hand over his face.  “She’s been hovering and it’s driving me crazy.” He reached his hand out and caught Tony as he leaned beside Bucky’s bed to plug in his laptop.  “C’mere, you,” he said, tugging Tony closer. “Lay down with me for a minute.”

            Tony shrugged off his suit coat, kicked off his shoes, and carefully climbed into the hospital bed, trying not to jostle Bucky too much as he rested his head on Bucky’s good shoulder.  As soon as he was settled Bucky wrapped his arm around him and buried his face in Tony’s hair, letting out a sigh that seemed to come from his bones.

            “So.  What happened to level five Paladin?” Tony murmured, flattening his hand on Bucky’s chest to feel the beat of his heart, steady and comforting.  He took a few deep breaths and swallowed thickly against the tears that stung his eyes.

            “Guess I rolled a critical failure,” Bucky said with a slightly damp laugh, squeezing tighter and pressing a kiss to the top of Tony’s head.  

            “Guess I’m going to have to do something about that.”

            “Yeah?  Is my new arm gonna give me plus five luck?”

            Tony groaned and buried his face in Bucky’s shoulder. “Oh my God, you are such a nerd,” he said, his voice muffled.  “Speaking of, we need to go over everything that’s going to happen with that.  Legal should have delivered-”

            “Later, ok? Just lay here with me for a bit.”

            “Ok.”  Tony would have sworn that he had only closed his eyes for a moment, but the sound of the door opening jerked him awake. The nurse that was puttering around the room had a pinched look to her mouth that made Tony sit up self-consciously, aware that he probably had creases in his cheek from falling asleep on Bucky’s shoulder.

            When she was gone, having questioned Bucky about his pain levels with what Tony thought was unnecessary curtness, Tony scowled at the door. “Your suite in my building is almost done.  A few days, tops, then you can get out of here.”

            “My suite?” Bucky repeated. “Your building?”

            “Yeah.  I mean, you don’t want to keep staying in this hospital, do you?”  Tony looked at Bucky, suddenly worried.  Tony had just assumed that Bucky would be fine staying here in New York and thought that it would make sense that he would stay in the same condo building that Tony did, but suddenly all of that seemed…presumptuous.  “Though I guess your mom does live in the city…” Which hadn’t even occurred to him until now.

            But Bucky was just smiling at him.  “Tony, are you asking me to move in with you?”

            “No – well, kinda. I mean, you would have your own-“ then Tony realized Bucky was teasing him and he laid back down with a huff, poking Bucky in the side.  “I’m also building a separate medical suite, there’s a neurologist that is helping me get everything we need.”

            “As soon as I get everything straightened out with the Army I’ll pack up my stuff.  It’s not like I’m in love with Kentucky.” 

            Tony made a thoughtful noise and shifted a little on the bed, hearing it whir as it adjusted to his new position and wondered who he knew in the Army that could fast forward Bucky’s discharge papers.  After a while Bucky nudged him. “Hey, Tony, can you see if the door has a lock on it?”

            Confused, Tony sat up to get a closer look. “No, I don’t think so.  Not exactly a standard feature in hospitals.”  When Bucky looked disappointed he said.  “But I could block it with a chair or something, I guess. Why?”

            Bucky got a look in his eye that Tony immediately recognized, even though it had been weeks since he’d seen it, and his lips curled in a slow smile.  “I’ve had a really rough week, I could use a pick me up.”

            “Really? Here?” Tony looked around the room as if it had changed into something other than a bland hospital room where the sharp smell of disinfectant barely covered what could only be described as eau de sick people.  “This is possibly the least sexy place imaginable.”

            “Nah,” Bucky said.  “Haven’t you seen all those hospital dramas? People do it in places like this all the time.”  When Tony still hesitated, Bucky ran his hand up Tony’s back to squeeze the back of his neck. “The nurse just came, so they won’t be back for a few hours when they bring dinner, and the pain killers are going to make me sleepy soon.”

            “This is a terrible idea,” Tony said with a short laugh, but he climbed off the hospital bed to improvise a barricade for the door, shaking his head when he heard Bucky say “oh, _yeah,_ ” behind him.  When he turned back around Bucky was patting his lap and biting his lip, eyes heavy-lidded, somehow looking breathtakingly sexy despite the hospital gown and beeping machines.

            Tony loosened his tie as he approached the bed.  “What did you have in mind?”  He climbed into the bed and straddled Bucky’s hips, unbuttoning his dress shirt while Bucky made short work of his belt buckle, knuckles brushing his rapidly hardening erection through his pants.

            “First, I just want to look at you,” Bucky said as he brushed the edges of Tony’s shirt apart to run his hand up Tony’s ribs, circling his thumb over a nipple, making him shiver. “God, I missed you so much.”

            “I missed you, too,” Tony said as he unfastened the helpful snaps at the shoulders of Bucky’s hospital gown, shoving it down to his waist and carefully avoiding the still healing wounds on his left side. Heat curled at the base of his spine at the sight of all of that skin and muscle beneath him, the stubble on Bucky’s cheeks making him look rougher and slight dangerous with that short military haircut.  Bucky’s hand was roaming, curling over his shoulder, dragging blunt nails down his back, leaving trails of fire in its wake.  Suddenly impatient, Tony fumbled at the fastening of his suit pants, shoving them and his underwear low on his hips.

            “Yeah, take your cock out for me,” Bucky said, licking his lips as he watched Tony stroke himself. Tony’s head fell back with a groan when Bucky pinched his nipple.  “Christ, you look like intern about to get fucked in supply closet, all sexy and debauched in that suit.” He tugged on Tony’s tie, hanging loosely around Tony’s neck. “Gimme your mouth,” he rumbled, and Tony went willingly, moaning around Bucky’s tongue when his hand slid down Tony’s back to cup his ass, fingers sliding teasingly between the cheeks.

            Leaning over, Tony couldn’t help but grind himself against Bucky’s stomach, pushing blankets and clothing out of the way so he could wrap his hand around Bucky’s cock as well. “Dammit, here we are back in the States and we still can’t be as loud as we want,” Tony murmured against Bucky’s lips at his bitten off groan.

            “I know, Christ,” Bucky’s hand tightened on Tony’s ass as he fucked up into Tony’s fist, his breath coming in hard and fast puffs against Tony’s mouth. “I wanna hear all the sounds you make.  After you left it was hard to believe you were real, that I could be so lucky.  I carried your card with me everywhere.”

            Tony’s breath hitched on a moan and then he was moving down Bucky’s body until he could put his mouth on his cock, closing his eyes at the feel of the warm, smooth hardness of it against his tongue. Now Bucky’s hands were carding through his hair, cradling his cheek, running fingers over the stretch of Tony’s lips around his cock.  “Look at you, so fucking sexy,” Bucky muttered, cheeks flushed and pupils blown black as he watched, his thighs tensing under Tony’s hands with the need to thrust into the wet heat of his mouth.  "I've been fantasizing about this for weeks."

            Tony made a sound deep in his chest at the look on Bucky’s face and moved down on Bucky’s cock until it hit the back of his throat and that was it, that was all she wrote for Bucky. The only warning was a bitten off grunt and a small sting in his scalp when Bucky’s hand clenched, making Tony shudder, and then his cock was pulsing on Tony’s tongue as he came.  Tony was willing to stay there until Bucky finished coming down but instead he was tugging Tony back up his body, wrapping his hand around Tony’s painfully hard cock.

            “Come one, let me see,” Bucky said, voice low and hoarse, and their fingers overlapped as Tony stroked himself rough and fast, resting his forehead on Bucky’s as they watched Tony’s cock slipping through their fingers, precome making the glide slippery and so, so good.  “Come for me, sweetheart, give me a show, it’s been so long-” Bucky turned his head to capture Tony’s mouth for a deep kiss, tongue stroking deep.  Tony’s release felt like it was ripped from him and he came with a sound that was almost a sob, spilling over their fingers onto Bucky’s stomach. He buries his head in Bucky’s neck, sucking in deep breaths as he tried to stop trembling, but it seems like the orgasm broke open a dam inside him and the tears wouldn’t stop coming.  Bucky was saying something low and soothing as he wiped his hand on the sheet, then he was holding Tony close as he cried.

            “Jesus Christ,” Tony finally said, voice thick. He sat up and scrubbed his sleeve over his eyes and cheeks, feeling his cheeks start to get hot.  But then Bucky was pulling him back down for another kiss, and this time the press of his lips was a simple benediction.  When he sat up he saw that Bucky’s eyes were red as well and he cupped Bucky’s face with the hand that wasn’t gross with drying come, smiling slightly.

            “I know, look at us sappy idiots,” Bucky said with a crooked grin, tugging a sheet up to clean up their mess. Tony huffed out a short laugh as he wiped his hand off and started buttoning his shirt up again.

            “Yeah, well, that’s what you get, coming home by medevac like tragic hero, scaring everyone to death.”  Tony climbed off the bed to tuck his shirt back into his pants and generally look less like he just had a quickie in his boyfriend’s hospital bed.

            “I know, I’m an asshole. Thank you for putting up with me and my melodrama.”

            Tony turned to face him, giving up and just pulling the tie all the way off.  “I can’t _wait_ to put up with you and your melodrama,” he said honestly. 

            “Don’t you make me cry again, dickhead,” Bucky said with a scowl that couldn’t hide the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

***

            Though Tony wanted to have the private medical suite finished before they started the surgeries, Bucky ended up having the first one while he was still at the hospital.  Tony waited in the observation room during the whole eight hour surgery, watching as the neurologist – Dr. Strange, arrogant as hell but a magician with the scalpel – painstakingly teased out the severed nerves from the remains of Bucky’s shoulder while another doctor twined the nerve endings around the thin filaments Tony provided. The filaments were coated in a cellular matrix rife with stem cells and a growth medium that should encourage the nerves to regrow around the thin wires; in the proof of concept experiments, the nerve cells actually transmitted electric signals through the wires.  It was a leap to go from regrowing nerve cells in a petri dish to seeing if they would do the same thing in a human body, but Tony figured sometimes you gotta run before you walk.

            Finally Dr. Strange put his scalpel down and started to pull off his gloves. As he stepped away from the operating table Tony could see the forest of tiny wires erupting from the meat of Bucky’s shoulder, which was simultaneously the coolest and grossest thing Tony had ever seen.  The other doctor carefully wrapped up all of the wires, winding them together carefully so they didn’t get tangled, and then rebandaged the shoulder.   The medical suite in Tony's building was finally finished and sanitized, so Dr. Strange agreed that as soon as Bucky woke up and felt steady enough on his feet, he could be discharged. 

            Tony could barely contain himself as they wheeled Bucky out of the hospital and helped him into the car.  Bucky listened with amusement while Tony rambled about his newest projects and his plans for Bucky’s arm and the features of his new apartment, barely drawing a breath as his hands moved with animation. The driver hadn’t even turned off the car yet before Tony was opening the door and climbing out, opening the trunk to get Bucky’s bag from the hospital.  “For right now if you need to go anywhere let me know and Mr. Happy here might be available to take you,” he said, tilting his head towards the driver. “I’ll get your motorcycle sent up here as soon as possible so you can ride it when we get your arm built.  Otherwise, there's taxis, and I guess the metro is somewhere close by-”

            “Tony,” Bucky jumped in as Tony took a breath. “Slow down.” As Tony nodded he took his hand and squeezed it, pulling him in close for a quick kiss while the driver pushed the button for the eleventh floor. When the doors opened, there were only two doors in the short hallway. 

            Tony led him to the one on the left, pulling an electronic key fob out of his pocket. “The other door goes to my rooms,” he explained. “I changed the door lock to an electronic one so if it’s in your pocket and you can’t get it out, the doors will still open when you get close enough.”

            Bucky wanted to grab Tony and kiss him again for the thoughtfulness, but Tony’s driver was already looking awkward enough as he brought Bucky’s bags inside.

            Tony seemed to have noticed that too. “Thanks, Harold.  Go ahead and go home, we’re done for the day.” As he nodded and let himself out, Tony caught up to Bucky in the kitchen. “I’ll show you the rest of the place, but first, I’ve got some people for you to meet.”

            “People?” Bucky echoed curiously. He knew the only family Tony had were a few distant cousins, and the only other person Tony talked about that he hadn’t met yet was this mysterious Rhodey person.

            “Remember JARVIS?  That AI I was making?”

            “Sure.” 

            “Well, introduce yourself,” Tony said, elbowing him gently in the side with a proud smile. “JARVIS, this is Bucky. Add his vocal pattern as an authorized user.”

            “Hello, sir. Welcome home.” Bucky looked up at the ceiling at the disembodied voice with a faint British accent.

            "Uh, hello JARVIS. Nice to...um, meet you?" Bucky finished awkwardly but Tony only nodded in approval. 

            “I installed him in all of our rooms. He’s still got a lot of learning to do, but the more you interact with him the better he gets so you can ask him anything.  He’s keyed in to the lights, to the internet, whatever you want. He can call people, too.” 

            “Thanks.” _That_ was going to take some getting used to.  “Hey, he doesn’t have like, cameras or anything in my rooms, right?” He asked as Tony led him back to the elevator.

            “No.  I did put in some heat sensors and heart rate monitors in case there’s an emergency when you’re here alone. JARVIS, laboratory level, please.  Note that James Buchanan Barnes aka Bucky is to have full access to the laboratory level.”  Without pushing any buttons the elevator started going up.  “The stuff in my lab is pretty classified so only a few people know it even exists here, much less are allowed into it,” Tony explained.  

            Bucky raised his eyebrows at that but didn’t comment.  As soon as the elevator doors opened something around the level of his knee chirped and Bucky flinched away in surprise.  Tony stooped and patted a little robot on the grasper claw that it had raised in greeting.

            “Bucky, this is my illicit love child, Bite Size.” It whistled and rolled over to Bucky, tapping him gently on the knee while Bucky patted it as well.

            “Nice to meet you,” Bucky said politely, smothering a smile as he followed Tony deeper into the lab, with Bite Size bring up the rear.

            “And this is my eldest, DUM-E.”  This robot was larger, almost waist high, and it turned and waved its long pincer arm when Tony said his name. “He was my capstone project when I was an undergrad at MIT.”

            “Hello,” Bucky said, feeling only a little silly as he waved back.  Tony stopped at a table in the middle of the lab, one surrounded by three computer monitors with parts scattered across it in an organization that probably made sense to Tony.

            “And this is going to be your arm,” Tony said, gesturing to the parts on the table.  When Bucky joined him, he could see the rough skeleton of an arm and hand in the complex tangle of pipes, cables, and wires on the desk.  Bucky poked it, thinking maybe he should have read all of the documents Tony had shoved under his nose because frankly he didn’t see how this was going to attach to the ruined stump of his arm, but Tony was looking proud of himself so Bucky made noises of admiration.  The more Tony led him around the lab talking about his projects the more Bucky’s head started to spin; he had just seen a commercial about smart phones, something that had apparently become popular while he was in Afghanistan, but here Tony had disassembled one and was talking about installing a holographic projector for video calls and all Bucky could think was _Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope._

            Eventually Bucky was able to steer Tony back towards the elevator and head back down to his new rooms with the express purpose of finding the shower to wash the hospital off of him. To his surprise there was already a stack of boxes in the bedroom and living room.

            “Yeah, I hope you don’t mind, I had someone pack the stuff I’d thought you’d want immediately, like your clothes and games and stuff.  Dum Dum said that he’d already sent your stuff from Afghanistan, like your laptop and Playstation, so that should arrive soon.  I’ll help you unpack later, if you want,” Tony said, following Bucky to the bathroom, almost running into his back when Bucky stopped suddenly, gaping at how big the bathroom was.  It had a giant marble tile shower and a huge jacuzzi tub, two sinks and a TV mounted on one wall.  Tony glanced around, clearly wondering why Bucky had stopped.  Bucky closed his mouth and shook his head, realizing that Tony probably didn’t realize that this bathroom was bigger than most peoples’ bedrooms. “Also, I got you something. Well, I made it.”

            “Yeah?” Bucky decided he wanted a long soak so he started filling up the tub before turning to cup Tony’s jaw in his hand.  “You mean other than a new home, a new arm, and a reason to get up in the morning?”

            Tony rolled his eyes and his cheeks got red as he fumbled for the thing in his pocket. “Here. For luck. No more critical failures.”

            Bucky looked down at it in surprise, taking it from Tony’s hand to study it. “You made me a twenty-sided die?” It was beautiful, made out of something that looked like a tiger’s eye gemstone but in shades of blue, with bands of color that gleamed in the light. The numbers were etched in and painted white and as Bucky studied them he started laughing. None of the faces had a number lower than eleven, and twenty was on there at least four times. He wrapped his arm around Tony and held him tight, pressing kisses along his neck.   “I love it.  I’m going to be the envy of all the nerds at the game store.”  Pulling back, he raised an eyebrow suggestively.  “Wanna join me in the tub? Looks like this floor is pretty water-proof.”

            ***

            Tony didn’t realize how long he’d been scowling at the schematics of Bucky’s arm until the sound of the lab door opening made him look at the clock.  He stood, groaning as he stretched his back. “Hey, Obie,” he said as he started dumping the grinds out of the coffee maker and refilling it. “What’s up?”

            “Just wanted to check in on you,” Obie said vaguely, wandering around Tony’s lab and poking at his latest projects. “What’s this?”

            Tony joined him at the table.  “I’ve been trying to figure out how to power Bucky’s arm.  I thought if I could miniaturize Dad’s arc reactor…” he shrugged. “But I can’t get it small enough. Palm sized is the best I can do before it becomes unstable.”

            Obie hesitated for a moment, staring down at the dissected device. “Tony, are you sure this is the best use of your time?” He said carefully. “You’ve been falling behind on a lot of your work at Stark Industries, and – “

            “Ok, I know I have skipped a couple of meetings but come on.  Think of how many people we could help if this works! Not just amputees, but paraplegics-“

            Obie rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Tony, you and your father both had a tendency to- to get caught up in your projects, but do you know how much it would cost to do something like this on a large scale? Just because you’ve gotten excited about this – this new hobby-“

            Tony’s face hardened and he held up a hand. “Stop.  I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I think we should take Stark Industries in a new direction.  Move away from weapons and towards stuff like clean energy, robotics, advanced propulsion systems-“

            “Away from weapons?” Obie repeated as if he couldn’t believe his ears.  “Your father built this company to keep this country safe, and you just want to throw that away?”

            “My father always told me the point of having the best weapons is to discourage war, but these days all we are doing is making it easier to war without consequences.  Saying that we are ‘keeping this country safe’ is just hiding from the consequences of what we are doing.  I want to make this country _better._ ”

            “So now Stark Industries is going to become a non-profit? Where is this coming from all of a sudden?”

            Tony set his jaw and remembered Bucky’s off-handed comment in Iraq- _that’s going to change a lot of things for people._ It had surprised Tony, and then shamed him; with many of his inventions he’d never really given a thought to ways it could be used to help people, only _can I make it work_? and then it would usually get shelved as ‘interesting but irrelevant.’ Bucky had made him start thinking of dozens of applications for inventions that he had forgotten about because they didn’t relate to Stark Industries’ bottom line of building new and better weapons. But he wasn’t going to tell Obie that, he already disliked Bucky enough.  “Look, we don’t have to make these changes right now.  But I don’t want to sign any new contracts for weapons development, and when we start working on Stark Industries’ ten year prospectus, I’m including my ideas.”

            Obie was silent for a long time, scratching his jaw idly as he thought.  “Ok. Just as long as we don’t do anything hasty.  There’s a lot of people who depend on this company for their jobs and we owe it to them to not drive ourselves out of business.”

            Tony relaxed his shoulders and let out a breath in relief. “Of course.”

***

            “What’s up, Tony?” Bucky asked as casually as possible when Tony checked his phone for the third time in five minutes.  He’d been acting shady all afternoon, pacing around the apartment, fidgeting,  _cleaning,_ but it had gotten worse in the past thirty minutes and Bucky was _this close_ to shaking Tony until he confessed.

            “Nothing.  I’m expecting a delivery soon.”

            Bucky rolled his eyes and started to call him out on it when there was a knock at the door. He caught Tony’s grin before it was smothered by a look of mild interest.  “You want to get the door? You’re closer,” Tony pointed out.

            “And you’re full of shit,” Bucky muttered but he levered himself off the couch anyway, wondering what in the hell Tony had gotten for him this time.  Earlier this month Tony had noticed him getting aggravated trying to read a book one-handed and gotten him an e-reader, only to realize that it was also a pain in the ass to use one-handed. Then he’d disappeared into the lab for two days, only coming out for food, and when he was done he handed Bucky an e-reader that tracked his eye movements and went to the next page when he reached the bottom of the screen. 

            “Surprise, motherfucker!”

            Bucky stared at the group of guys crowded around his doorway, all smiling like loons, and a grin broke across his face.  “Holy shit, it’s you assholes!” He stepped back to let his squad in, suffering through a series of hugs and manly claps on the back that almost made him stumble. 

            “You made it!” Tony paused the movie he had been pretending to watch and stood up to shake hands.

            “Well, you sent us plane tickets and then had a driver waiting for us at the airport,” Dugan pointed out as everyone threw their bags in a corner of the room to be sorted out later.  “The only thing we had to do for ourselves was to get our asses on the plane.”

            “So you just barely made it,” Bucky said, still grinning. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed these guys until now.  “Lemme get you some drinks.  Anyone want to lend me a hand?”

            There was a moment of silence and then everyone was groaning. “And to think, we actually missed you,” Gabe said accusingly.  Then the room went silent when Bite Size came tootling through the room, wheeled a circle around Bucky, and then went into the kitchen to make noises at the refrigerator. 

            “Oh, yeah, Tony has robots,” Bucky said unnecessarily.  “They like to be helpful.”

            “That is some R2D2 shit right there,” Jim said, watching Bite Size try to open the refrigerator.  “Fucking awesome.”

            “Right?” Bucky stepped around the little robot to open the door.  Bite Size’s grabber arm started pulling beers off the bottom shelf and handing them up to Bucky, who passed them around to his friends one at a time.  “Have a seat, guys,” he said, tilting his head towards the couch.  “Fill me in, did I miss anything?”

            The first part of the evening was spent catching up while emptying most of a case of beer.  Dugan told him a story about how Lt Rogers almost gave Col Phillips an apoplectic fit when he took the team out on an unauthorized maneuver to assist a local police unit that was being attacked by the Taliban. Shit was about to hit the fan for the LT then it turned out that the head of the police was the second-cousin or some shit of the Afghani President, so Rogers got a public commendation and a private, off the records chewing out for it.  In return, Bucky told them, over Tony’s loud protests, about how Tony had decided on a whim in the middle of one of his coffee-fueled insomnia binges to see whether he could soup up the microwave in his kitchen so that it would heat up a frozen burrito in less than 15 seconds. The resulting explosion was really the only excuse they needed to have Tony all but move in with Bucky and now Tony was under strict orders to stay away from all kitchen appliances.  Tony retaliated by telling them the story of how Bucky tried to cut his own hair one-handed and pulled out his phone to show them the pictures he’d tried to take while Bucky was chasing him around the apartment.

             During a brief pause in the conversation Dugan sat up and got a serious look on his face.  “So we’re not just here to visit,” Dugan said as he dug out a box from the pocket of his cargo pants. “Your discharge papers and everything came through a long time ago, but they just sent this to Lt. Rogers last week and we asked him to let us give it to you.”

            Tony shifted to sit on the edge of the couch so he could see what Dugan had. Bucky, however, seemed to already know, judging from the look on his face.  He refused to take it from Dugan, just staring at him flatly until he opened it and set it on the coffee table.

            It was a Purple Heart.  “No,” Bucky said. “I’m not taking that.”

            Nobody but Tony seemed surprised at Bucky’s reaction.  Gabe rolled his eyes and said, “Well, like it or not, it belongs to you.”

            “Send it back. I don’t want it.”

            “Why not?” Tony asked incredulously. “You lost an arm, you deserve some kind of recognition – “

            “Look, there are guys who got wounded saving someone’s life, or catching terrorists, or defending their units from enemy fire. I was driving in a stupid convoy, probably singing some stupid song-”

            “Brittany Spears,” Jim said. “ _Toxic._ ”

            Bucky stared at him for a long moment. “That’s a damn lie-” he started but Jim cut him off with a sharp shake of his head.

            “No, no, it’s not, you were giving Falsworth shit because his girl threatened to leave him if he didn’t buy her a new HD TV.  You said, ‘man, that shit sounds toxic,’ then started singing.”  Everyone else around the table nodded in agreement.

            Bucky stared at Jim. “How in the hell do you remember that?” Jim opened his mouth but Bucky waved him into silence. “Doesn’t matter.  My point is, taking this medal when I should have been looking for IEDs instead of goofing around cheapens it for everyone else.” He started to shove it across the table but Tony put his hand on it.

            “Was anyone else injured while you guys were in Afghanistan?”

            “I pinched my finger on my rifle when I was cleaning it once,” Dugan offered after a moment of thought. “Got a hell of a blood blister.”

            “It has to be either while engaging with an enemy or as a result of enemy action,” Jim pointed out.  “I was in the front seat with Bucky when that IED went off. Gave me a concussion.”

            “My left ear still rings sometimes from the blast.  I twisted my ankle getting out of the HMV for an op once, remember? How about that?” Gabe said, taking a swallow of his beer.  “I even had to get it looked at by the medic because it swelled up so much I couldn’t take my boot off.”

            “ _Maybe_ ,” Tony said, making a dubious face.  “Let’s vote.  Everyone raise your left hand if you think Jim should get the Purple Heart.”  He looked around the room where everyone was hiding a smile at Bucky’s furious scowl. “No one? How about Gabe? I said _left_ hand, Bucky-“

            Bucky snatched the offending box from the coffee table. “I hate all of you,” he announced, standing to go put the box in the bedroom.  He pointed at Tony. “You, in particular, are going to pay for this,” he growled before he disappeared down the hallway.

            “Sounds exciting!” Tony called after him.

            “And you know you love us,” Gabe chimed in.  “You’d probably give your other arm to keep us safe, especially if Tony is going to keep building you new ones.”

            “Very funny,” Bucky said when he returned.  He was still scowling but Tony could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

            Dugan turned to Tony, his expression serious.  “Hey, exactly how many mechanical parts does a person need before they are officially considered a cyborg? Asking for a friend,” but he could barely finish his sentence before Bucky had him in a one-armed headlock.

 

            A few hours later Bucky found Dugan smoking out on the balcony, looking at the glittering lights of the city as his cigar glowed red in the dark.  “Are you hiding after Tony beat your ass in Call of Duty?”  Bucky said as he joined him, sliding the glass door closed behind him.  As the drinks flowed Bucky and his crew had gotten worse and worse at the game while Tony somehow got _better_ , which he attributed to a misspent youth with a self-deprecating shrug.

            “Just needed some fresh air,” Dugan said with a grin, breathing in deeply.  “Ah, smog. So refreshing.” 

            “Thanks for coming,” Bucky said, having had just enough alcohol to feel maudlin.  “I’ve missed you guys.”

            “We missed you too, Barnes.  But you seem happy here,” Dugan said, gesturing inside to where Tony was on his feet with a big smile on his face while Gabe was scowling angrily at the television.

            Bucky leaned against the railing so he could watch Tony, who just dropped the controller with relish while Jim was laughing at the look on Gabe’s face. “Yeah, I’m pretty happy.  Tony’s…” Bucky trailed off because his throat started getting thick.

            “I get it, I’ll just insert all the words I know for ‘awesome’ so you don’t have to.”

            “And smart.”

            “Those too.”

            “And-“

            “Good-looking? Sweet?” Dugan laughed, blowing out a cloud of smoke.  “I know how it is, Bucky, I’ve been in love before.”

            “I think I fell in love with him in Afghanistan,” Bucky confessed, staring at his feet.

            “No shit.”  Bucky must have looked surprised at that because Dugan laughed again.  “As soon as you laid eyes on him you looked like someone had hit you in the head with a brick.  Then one day, you look like the cat that ate the canary, then he leaves and you look like a kicked puppy.  You don’t have to be Sherlock to put that shit together.”

            “That obvious?”

            “I’d be surprised if the LT didn’t notice, but,” Dugan shrugged. “Whatever.  We were just happy for you. I’m just sorry that…”

            “Don’t worry about it, it’s not your fault.”

            “Not yours either.” When Bucky was silent, Dugan added, “unless you are going to say that every other poor asshole who got blown up or shot had it coming because they weren’t paying enough attention?”

            “Jesus, of course not.  _Fine_ , I get it. Thank you for bringing me my Purple Heart, I’m a true American hero.”

            “And don’t you forget it,” Dugan said with satisfaction. He stubbed out his cigar on the concrete of the balcony.  “Think Tony will let us see his lab? I bet he’s got all sorts of cool shit in there.”

            “He really does.”        

***

            “Alright, today’s the day,” Tony said brightly as he found Bucky in the living room, trying to cover up the slightly queasy feeling in his stomach.  “Are you ready?”

            “Yeah.” Bucky put down his e-reader but instead of standing he pulled Tony into his lap. “I missed you this morning.”

            “I couldn’t sleep.”

            Bucky gave him a fond half-smile. “I figured.  That’s why I didn’t come find you when I woke up alone.  Why are you so nervous about today?”

            “I’m not-“ Tony stopped when Bucky gave him a skeptical look.  He let his head fall onto Bucky’s shoulder with a sigh.  “I don’t know.  Maybe because today makes it real. Once they replace your shoulder joint then the next step is the arm itself.”

            Bucky squeezed the back of his neck sympathetically, massaging a little as Tony went limp against him with another sigh.  “Yeah, but I’ve seen the work you’ve done on the arm already, and it looks sick as hell.  The first phase went better than you expected and that was way more difficult than orthopedic surgery.”

            “True.” The nerve grafts had been more successful than anyone could have anticipated; they had given them a month to heal before they started testing the wires, registering an electric signal on each one.  Tony and Bucky had spent an entire day in the lab starting to map what Bucky felt when each wire was exposed to a mild electric current.  Tony sent the results to the scientists who had done the original proof of concept trials for them to write up for publication, basically guaranteeing them tenure and grant money for life.  “Still.”

            “Still nothing.” Bucky turned his head so that he could press a kiss to Tony’s temple. “I’m ready to have two arms again, so I can touch your face and your ass at the same time again.”

            Tony laughed. “Your two favorite parts?”

            “Nah, if you were going to give me enough arms to touch all of my favorite parts at the same time I’d need like, eight.” Bucky did move his hand from Tony’s neck so that he could squeeze his ass.

            “Yeah? If we had more time I’d ask you to elaborate on that.”  Tony kissed a line up Bucky’s neck and bit his ear lightly, smiling when he felt Bucky shiver.

            “Are you sure we don’t have enough time?” Bucky shifted a little so that Tony could feel the growing bulge in his pants.  “I mean, I’m the patient. What are they going to do, get started without me?  Also, isn’t it like, just a few floors up?”

            “Yeah, that’s true,” Tony conceded, pressing his lips against the corner of Bucky’s victorious grin as Bucky started tugging at the button and zipper on Tony’s pants.

            Bucky’s voice deepened and his eyes darkened. “Plus, I bet you’re still loose and wet from last night,” he drawled, making Tony shiver at the memory.  Last night Bucky had been determined to take it slow, bending Tony over the arm of the sofa and eating him out until Tony was reduced to a stream of curses. Then he fingered him open for like _hours_ and before he finally slid inside, fucking in and out so slowly while holding Tony down against the couch with a hand between his shoulder blades.  In the end Tony had come untouched for the first time in his not-inconsiderable experience, which was  _amazing_ but holy hell he thought he was going to have a heart attack along the way. 

            Tony swallowed thickly and widened his legs as Bucky slipped his hand in the back of Tony’s pants, dipping his finger in Tony’s hole experimentally.  “Oh, yeah,” he said, slipping another finger and curling them as he thrust, making Tony’s hips jerk. “Wanna have a quickie before we go upstairs?  You’re not too sore?”

            Tony thrust his hips against Bucky’s fingers, savoring the sweet sting of the stretch.  He was a little sore but only in the best way.  “Let’s do it,” he said, and Bucky withdrew his fingers to help him kick off his pants and shove Bucky’s down to his thighs. Tony licked a hot stripe up Bucky’s cock while he fumbled for a tube of lube that he remembered rolling under the couch last night.

            Bucky’s head fell back against the couch with a groan as Tony slicked him up and straddled his hips, lowering himself slowly onto Bucky’s cock.  He hissed a little at the burn and Bucky bit his lip, hand gripping the couch tightly in an effort to keep himself still and not thrust up into the heat of Tony’s body.  “Christ, look at you,” Bucky said, helping Tony shrug out of his shirt. “So fucking sexy.  You’re so good to me.” He started to reach for Tony but Tony grabbed his hand and put it on the back of the couch, interlacing their fingers.

            “Behave, Sergeant Barnes,” Tony warned, and smiled when Bucky broke out in goosebumps, a red flush spreading down his chest. He rolled his hips, grinding, waves of heat crawling down his spine with every broken sound that came out of Bucky.

            “Jesus fuck, Tony,” Bucky gritted out, throwing his head back and closing his eyes. “For the love of God, please, just-“

            "I said behave." Tony bit a line along the pale line of his throat and stilled his movements. Bucky groaned and gave one aborted thrust before he could stop himself, breaths coming hard and fast.  Tony sat up and earned another choked off moan as he used his still-slicked hand to start stroking himself, feeling his body tighten rhythmically around the cock in his ass.  He rocked a little on Bucky's lap as chased his orgasm, shivering at the ravenous look in Bucky's heavy-lidded eyes as he watched.

             Tony took his hand from where he had been bracing himself on the couch and raked his nails down Bucky's ribs. Between his thighs he could feel Bucky trembling, abdomen muscles twitching with need; there was a thin sheen of sweat on the thickly muscled line of Bucky's shoulders and the muscles in his arm were tense where he was still gripping the back.  Biting his lip on a low moan, he teased Bucky's nipple with his free hand while his other was still stroking himself, thumb occasionally rolling over the head to catch the steady stream of precome.  It was a struggle to keep the movements of his hands slow because Bucky's cock is pressing right against the spot inside that makes every one of Tony's rocking motions shoot sparks up and down his spine, tension coiling in his groin.  

            Bucky flexed in a way that made his cock press harder against that spot, drawing a surprised grunt out of Tony. "You going to come for me, sweetheart?" Bucky breathed, voice ragged.  "God, I loved hearing the sounds you made last night, that was so fucking hot. I could have come just from that alone.  Next time I want you to take me apart with those beautiful hands of yours, and maybe that sweet mouth that I can't get enough of."  

            "Jesus Christ," Tony groaned.  "You win, fuck me,  _fuck_ -

            Tony didn't even get the words out before Bucky wrapped his arm around Tony's shoulders to hold him still while he was thrusting up into him, burying his face in Tony's neck.  Tony fisted his hand in Bucky's hair and pulled his head back for a punishing kiss.  Bucky bit his lip and the sting went straight to Tony's groin and that's what tipped him over the edge, his body tightening around Bucky's cock as his come spilled hot and wet between their bodies.  Bucky growled "shit, yes, babe" against his mouth, rolling his hips, and then he was coming too, cock pulsing in Tony's ass.

            Arm still around Tony, Bucky collapsed back against the couch with a sound that was half-sigh, half-groan.  "Christ, now I need a nap."

            Tony laughed and reached down for his shirt to clean them up.  "Well, considering you're going to be sedated when you get upstairs, you are going to get that nap."

            Bucky accepted the shirt and threw it in the general direction of the laundry when he was finished with it, then pulled Tony in for a kiss, long and deep.  "That's not a nap.  A nap is curling up with you on this obscenely large couch with some stupid horror movie on the television, then waking up in time for dinner and staying up all night as a result."

            Tony had to admit that sounded nice.  When Bucky couldn't sleep sometimes he joined Tony in his lab, kicking his heels while sitting on one of the work tables or bring a book to read.  But the orthopaedic surgeon was probably already upstairs, wondering where in the hell his patient was, so he pulled his pants back on and went to their bedroom to get a new shirt.  "Next time." he promised as he shooed Bucky towards the elevator.

***

            “What’s this?” Bucky said curiously.  On the table, next to all of Tony’s complex diagnostic equipment, was a simple-looking box with two holes in one end and some mirrors inside.

            “It’s called mirror therapy.  It’s been used to help people who have phantom pains because of amputations, but I am going to see if we can use it to help program your arm.  Put your hands in the holes.”

            Bucky shrugged and sat down, sliding his hands into the holes in the box.  To his surprise, instead of seeing the half-finished, skeletal looking left hand, it was a flesh one, just like his right hand. “Huh. Neat.”

            “Just keep your hands still for now,” Tony said, hooking the left arm up to his machine before pulling Bucky’s sleeves down so that it appeared like Bucky did have two real hands again.  “Ok, ready?”

            What followed next was hours of “raise your index fingers.  Middle fingers. Ring fingers. Make a fist. Relax. Again” Until Bucky let his head fall back against the chair’s headrest with an aggravated groan.

            “Tony, this is so boring.  My ass hurts from sitting in this chair.”

            “That’s not why _my_ ass hurts,” Tony muttered without thinking, then got red when Bucky leered at him.  “I know it’s boring, but I am getting some really great stuff here. Another hour or so then we’ll stop for the day?”

            Bucky sighed. “Ok. Tell me a story?”

            Tony considered for a moment.  “Yeah, I don’t see why not.  Just do what my hands do, ok?”  He slid off his stool and stood in front of Bucky so that Bucky could see his hands and Tony could still see the computer screen.  “Have I ever told you about my Aunt Peggy?” Bucky shook his head, watching Tony’s hands move.  “She’s not really my aunt, more of a close family friend, but I think one of my favorite memories is when we were all having dinner together and my mom asked if I was seeing anyone in school.  I had just met my first boyfriend and I was still all silly about it, so I started talking about him and I thought I was being real subtle but then I look up and my dad is just..staring at me.” Tony made a face.  “Everyone was staring at me.  I realized that I must not have been as careful as I thought because my dad is furious and my mom is pale as a ghost.  I don’t know what I looked like, I was terrified, you know-” Bucky nodded and winced in sympathy.  “But Aunt Peggy turns to my dad and says, ‘Howard Anthony Walter Stark, don’t you _fucking dare._ ’  It was the first time I’d ever heard someone use my dad’s full name and the first time I ever heard her curse.  It was amazing.”

            Bucky echoed Tony’s smile but wished he could get up and give him a hug because Tony was smiling in a way that was a cover for pain that still lingered. “Then what happened?”

             “She talked about work for the rest of the dinner so that it wasn’t too awkward. I made sure to date a lot of women after that.  I think after a while my dad either forgot about it or thought it was just a phase or something.  I spent a lot of time trying to work myself into a righteous fury to confront him about it, but…” Tony shrugged. “He died first.”

            “That sucks, Tony, I’m sorry.  I was scared as hell when I brought a boy home for the first time, psyching myself up with some pre-emptive indignation and defiance, but my mom just invited him in and that was that.  Not a very interesting story at all.”

            Tony leaned over the table to give him a kiss before continuing with the hand exercises.  “So I’ve told you before about Rhodey and how we met when we got assigned as roommates in college, right? Well, one night before the final for my physics prerequisite I got really high and drunk, to the point where I was still out of it by the time the test was supposed to start.  Since I needed to pass this class to take any of the classes for my major, I had authorized Rhodey to get me to that test by whatever means possible. He shoved me into a cold shower, got me a coffee that was just nine shots of expresso and then handed me one of those five hour energy drinks trying to wake me up.” Tony shuddered at the memory.  “I have no memory of taking the test, but three days later my professor called me into his office and showed it to me.  On the front page, in really tiny writing, I proposed the existence of a new particle and suggested a way to test for it by making modifications to our existing technology.  On the back, I outlined a way to stabilize quantum tunneling that could, theoretically, create portals through space.”

            Bucky gaped while Tony smiled and shrugged ruefully.  “So did you pass the test?”

            “Oh no, I completely failed the test.  Didn’t answer a single question so the professor had to give me a zero.  But he gave me extra credit in the class because of that stuff so I ended up passing and he agreed to be my thesis advisor later. They’ve got experiments scheduled at the Large Hadron Collider for later on this year to try to find that particle, and the space portal thing turned out to be my first published article.”

            “Space portals, huh?”

            “Yeah.  According to my calculations, conceived when I was tripping out of my mind, if you can find a strong enough energy source you can hack the universe.”  Tony leaned to the side and checked the results on the computer.  “I think we’re at a good stopping point.  You can take your hands out.” He turned off the computer and unplugged the sensor cables from Bucky’s arm.

            Bucky pulled his hands out and tried to open and close the left one; it responded sluggishly and clumsily, gears whirring, but it was still amazing that it worked at all.  Tony promised that by the end of everything the hand would work just like the other one, smooth and seamless without the lag time.

            The hand made up for it in pure strength, though.  Right now Tony was training him with delicate movements, working up to typing or playing the piano or handling soft fruit, but Bucky had slipped going down a set of stairs at the metro and his new hand had crushed the handrail like it was made of paper.  He’d run away guiltily and had gone straight home to test the hand’s strength against various objects in the house;  Tony was still looking for the cue ball from his pool table that Bucky had crushed as part of the investigation.

            “A few more days of this and we can upload the data to your arm,” Tony said optimistically, patting Bucky on the back.  "Then we can move into the next phase."

            Bucky groaned again and banged his head on the table.  

***

            The last day of building Bucky’s new arm turned out to be rather anticlimactic.  He was hooked up to an IV in his right hand while Tony screwed in the final plates on his left hand, listening to Tony’s rambling with half an ear.  He tuned in periodically to hear things like “piezoelectric” and “fiber optics” and “titanium alloy” before tuning out again. Then he realized Tony was patting his metal bicep and saying “and these bad boys are made of _vibranium_ ,” with such an air of satisfaction that Bucky looked at his arm curiously.  The interlocking plates were cool, especially when they opened up and realigned themselves, and it was fucking insane that he could feel the warmth and pressure of Tony’s hand on his arm, but other than that they just looked like stainless steel.

            “What’s vibranium?”

            “Well, for one, it’s the rarest metal on Earth.  We guess, I mean all of our supply comes from a tiny country in Africa so for all we know maybe they have a crapton.  My dad had gotten his hands on a little bit during the war and never did anything with it, so I made these plates out of it.”  He tapped one of them with a screwdriver and Bucky flinched, expecting it to hurt, but he didn’t feel anything. “The reason why I used it is because vibranium is incredibly impact resistant.”

            “Impact resistant?”  Bucky stared down at his arm, then back up at Tony’s smug look.  “You mean bullet-proof?”

            “Yeah. Stab-proof, bullet-proof, punching-proof, I guess you could say.  That’s why you can feel it when I do this,” he said as he slid down a hand down Bucky’s arm, “but not this,” and he slammed a wrench on the back of Bucky’s hand before Bucky could react.

            “Holy shit,” Bucky breathed, opening and closing his new hand in awe while Tony put away his tools, closing the draw to his work table with a clang.

            “Don’t forget to keep up with your physical therapy while I’m gone.”

            “Of course.”  Like he needed encouragement to go to the gym. He had tried to go regularly during the past few months, but running was aggravating because he was off balance, he couldn’t do any bench presses or pull-ups, and he had to be careful doing anything else so that he didn’t get too over-developed on the right side.  Having two arms at the gym again was glorious, even if he had to compensate for the fact that the left one weighed more than the right one.  Though Tony was probably referring to the incredibly boring finger exercises he'd designed to improve dexterity.  “Wait, while you’re gone?”

            “I mentioned a little earlier that I have another work trip to Afghanistan,” Tony said, smiling at Bucky’s guilty look as he wiped his hands on a shop towel.  “I’ve been talking to Obie about redirecting Stark Industries away from weapons and into other industries, like robotics and green energy, but…” Tony made a face. “Obie says we have to do this gradually or we’ll drive SI into the ground.  I’ve gotten him to agree to no new weapons contracts, but we still have to satisfy all of our existing ones.  So I’ll be going back to Afghanistan for a quick demo and I’ll be back in a few days.”

            “I want to come with you.” 

            “No way,” Tony said.  “Your immune system is still compromised while we make sure that your body doesn’t reject all this metal we’ve put inside you.”

            “Is that what this is for?” Bucked asked, flicking a metal finger at some blue goop hooked up to his IV, mixing with the saline to form a pale blue where it went into his hand.  He scratched at the skin around the IV injection site; this wasn’t the first time the blue stuff had been part of his medical regimen, but it always itched and stung a little.

            “No, that’s a formula from my dad’s notes.  The army was working on it as an advanced healing serum but the work stalled on it when the lead scientist died. I’m hoping it will help the inflammation at your shoulder.”  Tony trailed his fingers lightly over the seam where skin met metal, then up the bare line of Bucky’s neck to run his thumb along Bucky’s cheekbone.

            Bucky smiled and pulled Tony in for a kiss. “I’m just a science project for you now, aren’t I, Dr. Frankenstein?”

            “ _Project_ implies that I don’t know what I’m doing, which I take offense to,” Tony said loftily, but he slid his fingers into Bucky’s thick, overgrown hair and pulled him in for a deeper kiss.  "When you're done with your IV, you wanna take the hand for a test drive in the bedroom? For science?”  

            “Oh, well if it’s _for science,"_ Bucky said, running his new hand under Tony's shirt and watching him shiver from the touch of the cool metal.  "What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn't give you one for the road?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr, I'm on it](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/dracusfyre)


	2. Breaking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This particular chapter came out of another set of prompts found on <http://imaginetonyandbucky.tumblr.com>: _Tony is kidnapped. Maybe he is drugged and Tony’s kidnappers are trying to coerce him into building tech or getting information. Tony starts to hallucinate Bucky, who is helping him stay strong. Tony doesn’t know whats real or not, but he listens to Bucky while he waits for rescue. Imagine Bucky as the superhero and Tony as the brainwashed assassin. Basically reverse the roles and get them together._ and _For my prompt, I would love for Tony either to be under some sort of mind control, or brainwashed, or under a spell or something, and for Bucky to be the one to break him free from that control!!_ Prompt fills mean that it's not my fault, right?
> 
> Also, the timelines of the two POVs here don't match up, in case that's not clear.

            Talons of agony raked through Tony’s chest, bringing him out of the darkness with a gasp.  He didn’t know he was screaming until his throat started to hurt as well, and then thankfully everything went black again.

 ***

            Four days after Happy took Tony to the private airfield, there was a knock at the door.  Bucky opened it to see an officer in Air Force formal dress blues in the hallway, lips tight but eyes sympathetic.  Bucky's stomach dropped.  He knew that expression, he’d worn that expression, wearing his dress uniform, knocking on strangers' doors bearing bad news. “Sergeant James Barnes? My name is Lieutenant James Rhodes.”

            Rhodes? “Rhodey,” he managed, lips numb. “Tony calls you Rhodey.”

            The man took in a sharp breath and let it out shakily. “Yeah, he did. Does,” he corrected, but Bucky heard that, and now the numbness was crawling through his whole body.  If he hadn’t been bracing himself against the doorframe he probably would have swayed.  “Can I come in?” 

            Bucky had the wild thought of saying no, like if he didn’t hear the words than the fear that was making his heart pound wouldn’t become reality. But eventually he stepped back and let Lt. Rhodes inside.

            “Please have a seat, sir,” he said, belatedly remembering his manners.  “Would you like something to drink, I have…” he trailed off because making his brain think about anything but the bad news he was about to get was a struggle.

            “I’m fine.  Please call me James,” he said as he took a seat on the edge of the couch, running his hands over his cover nervously.  “Tony has told me a lot about you.  I was sorry to hear about your injury, but it seems like Tony worked his magic on you.” He gestured to Bucky’s metal arm with a small, sad smile.

            “Yeah,” Bucky said automatically, opening and closing his hand absently.  “He, um…” Bucky lost the train of that thought too.  The inside of his brain was breathlessly still, silent, like he had a rifle in his hand and was waiting to line up a shot.  James looked far away, too, like Bucky was watching him through a scope, noting just now that his eyes were red, that he was sitting stiffly as if there were an injury hiding under his uniform, that his hands were gripping his cover so tightly that his knuckles were pale.  His mouth was moving, but Bucky couldn’t hear a thing over the ringing silence in his ears.

            “Just say it,” Bucky said abruptly.  He noticed that his breathing was coming fast and shallow, making him lightheaded, so he concentrated on taking a few deep breaths. “Tony, is he- is he-“

            James licked his lips and cleared his throat. “Tony is missing.”

            “ _Missing?_ ”

            “There was an attack on our convoy in Afghanistan. When the dust cleared, he was just…gone.”  Bucky could only stare at him, stunned, so he continued, the words tripping over themselves. “The first vehicle drove over an IED and flipped over.  All of the vehicles stopped and that’s when they opened fire on us.  Tony and I were in separate vehicles…” James stopped when his voice broke. Bucky could see his throat working as he struggled to talk.  He stared down at his hands, which were now gripping each other tightly. “He was excited when the demo went well, and I…well, anyway, he said I had to ride in the hum-drumvee because his was the funvee so when – when the attack started, we got separated and…I am so sorry,” he said, his voice hoarse.  He wiped a hand roughly over his eyes. 

            Bucky’s mind was still moving sluggishly, trying to process that Tony was  _missing._   It was hard to fathom; people don’t usually just go missing, especially not people like Tony.  Compared to other wars Afghanistan had almost no men that went MIA.

            But when they did…when they did –

            Bucky forced himself to stop that thought.  Some people did make it home, he told himself.  That one guy was held for almost five years, right?  At least Tony wasn’t dead. So there was still hope. “Ok,” Bucky said, trying to gather his thoughts.  “So what now?”

             James took a moment to compose himself, and when he cleared his throat again his voice was much steadier.  “Well, we are looking for him, obviously.  I’m only here long enough to deliver the news to his next of kin and then I’ve been given special dispensation to lead the POW/MIA task force looking for him.  But…” When he met Bucky’s eyes this time, the look in them was significant. “Actually, could I have a drink of water now?”

            Confused, Bucky nodded and led him to the kitchen, where James turned the water on as high as it could go and gestured for Bucky to lean in close. “Look, everything about that attack seems fishy.  I think Tony was the target.”

            “You think he was kidnapped?” Christ now it was getting even weirder. “Why? Ransom?”

            “Well, that’s what I thought, but it’s been three days and we haven’t heard anything about a ransom.  And you know Stark Industries would pay, they have insurance for stuff like that.  So then I’m thinking, what if someone wanted Tony out of the way for some reason?”

              Bucky suddenly felt disoriented.  He put his hands under the loudly rushing water and splashed it on his face, trying to focus. Tony’s wealth always seemed so abstract to Bucky, like yeah, if you asked he would say that he  _knew_  Tony was a billionaire, but for Christ’s sake the man had clothes with holes in them, grease under his fingernails four days out of five, and talked to his electronics like they were people. The thought that someone would just – just – see him as an  _obstacle_  to be  _removed_  -

            “Whoa,” James said, interrupting the thought. Glancing up, Bucky saw that James was staring down at where Bucky’s metal hand had made cracks in the marble countertop.  Bucky let go and put his arm down at his side self-consciously.

            “Obadiah Stane,” Bucky said when James didn’t say anything else.  “They had been fighting a lot before he left.  About Stark Industries.”

            “Stane?” James leaned back against the counter, surprised.  “Wow.  I was thinking more like a competitor. Obadiah has been a family friend since before Tony was born. But it makes sense,” he added hurriedly when Bucky started to frown.  “I’m not disagreeing with you, but it will make it a lot goddamn harder to investigate him.”

            Bucky’s mind was still moving sluggishly.  James kept talking but Bucky’s eyes caught on Tony’s phone charger still plugged into the kitchen outlet.  Half a blender of one of his experimental smoothies was in the fridge and his favorite shampoo and body wash were still in Bucky’s shower.  Waiting for Tony to come home. “I’m coming with you to Afghanistan,” Bucky found himself saying. 

            James stopped in the middle of his sentence and stared at him.  “Sergeant, you’ve been a civilian for almost six months now.  It’s going to be hard to get you into Afghanistan.”

            “If you don’t take me I’ll take the closest commercial flight and walk,” Bucky said with an unnatural calmness.   

            “Okay,” James said, watching him warily.  “I’ll see what I can do.”

***

           The next time Tony woke up gasping for breath, feeling like there wasn’t enough room in his chest for his lungs. He tried to open his eyes but the room was spinning so much that he closed them again, still struggling for air. The room was cold enough that the sweat on his skin was cold and made him shiver, but he felt so hot, like he was burning up.  He tried to throw off the blankets that were piled on him but then someone was saying something to him and there was a cup of water being held to his lips.  Tony swallowed gratefully and realized vaguely that he was very, very ill.  Laying back against the pillows, he tried opening his eyes again and thankfully the room was still this time.  He saw a figure in the corner of the room.

            “Hey, Bucky, what are you doing here?” Tony said, or thought he said.  He was having a hard time focusing but he would know Bucky anywhere. He raised a hand to try to touch his face but couldn’t quite reach, even though it seemed like Bucky was  _right there._

            “Heard you needed a spot of help, babe,” Bucky said.  Maybe those weren’t his exact words, but Tony knew what he meant. Cool hands touched his forehead and sighed. He was feeling a bit woozy and he tried to explain that he felt pretty sick but his tongue suddenly felt too big for his mouth.  When sleep came for him again, he didn’t try to fight it and hoped that Bucky would understand and still be there when he woke up.

***

            Rhodey took him to the sight of the ambush after enough pestering, but there was little enough to see. The broken and shattered vehicles had already been dragged away, the bodies sent home.  All that was left was shards of glass and metal, scorch marks and bullet cases.   Without asking, Rhodey took him to a large rock by the side of the road.

            “This was the last place he was seen,” he said, kicking the rock a little. “We found his sunglasses here and some blood.  We think he might have been in the blast radius of stray mortar fire.”

            Bucky wiped a hand over his mouth, tasting bile as he tried to imagine Tony caught in the middle of an ambush, the terror of not knowing where the bullets are coming from or when you were going to catch one.

            “We can go back to base,” he said finally.  He didn’t know what he expected to find here, some clue or trace of Tony, but there was nothing, just sand and rocks.

***

            The next time he woke up he knew that Bucky wasn’t there, probably had never been there.  He felt stiff and sore, still tired from a sleep plagued with bizarre fever dreams, and his chest ached. Rubbing his eyes groggily he tried to sit up but someone was pushing him gently back onto the bed.

            “Don’t get up yet, you are still terribly injured,” a lightly accented voice said.  “Here, have some water.”

            Tony opened his eyes and saw an older man, balding with a grey goatee, brown eyes magnified by thin rimmed glasses.  The man helped him sit up slightly to drink, which hit Tony’s throat like rain in a desert. “Thanks,” Tony croaked. He lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling and that was the first time that he realized something was terribly wrong, because the ceiling was made of corrugated sheet metal and the walls were made of mud colored bricks, and the last thing he remembered was an explosion and gunfire.  He slowly stiffened as panic raced through his body.  “Alright, who the fuck are you and where the hell am I?”

            “Stay calm, ok?  Panicking is only going to bring some really unwanted attention. My name is Ho Yinsen.” The man put his hand on Tony’s shoulder, holding him still but not unkindly. “You’ve been captured by the Ten Rings.”

            Tony didn’t recognize the name, but sincerely doubted that it was the local chapter of Doctors Without Borders, especially what with the heavy metal cuff that he just noticed around one of his ankles.  Tony focused on breathing, trying not to panic because there were probably heavily armed terrorists right outside the door.  “What happened to me? You said I was injured.”

            “Yes. There was a great deal of shrapnel in your chest. I got out what I could, but…” Yinsen gently moved aside some of the bandages wrapped around Tony’s chest and this time Tony couldn’t stop it, he started hyperventilating.

            “What-“ Tony couldn’t breathe. He struggled to sit up again, the pressure in his chest almost unbearable. He felt like he was suffocating.

            Yinsen sighed and helped Tony sit up, rubbing him on the back soothingly.  “It’s an electromagnet.  It’s keeping tiny slivers of metal from entering your heart and shredding your septum.”

            “Oh my God.” That was all that could go through his head for a long time, and throughout it Yinsen sat with him sympathetically until Tony had to lay back down, having exhausted his meager supply of strength. “Why am I here?” Tony asked finally.

            “I don’t know.  They brought me here to keep you alive, that’s all.” Someone banged on the wooden door and shouted something in a language Tony didn’t recognize.  Yinsen stood and said something in return. “Try to get some rest.  Now that your fever has broken, we’re going to be moved somewhere else at any time.  I’ll see if they can get you some food.”

            Tony nodded but fell asleep before he returned, if he ever did return.

***

            “That…looks like a lot of blood,” Bucky said with a sick feeling.

            “Yeah.” James stood to the side while an Army specialist with a background in forensics tried to take a sample.  Whatever had happened here happened a long time ago because the blood was clearly old, staining a mattress on a rusty metal bed and the ground beneath it black.  Piles of equally bloody bandages filled up a trash can behind the house; after the ground team had cleared the premises, the specialist had taken a look at everything and shook her head.

            “If all of this blood came from one guy, no way he survived. Not without some quality medical treatment that you’re not going to find around here.”

            Bucky stared at the dirty mattress and tried really, really hard to not imagine Tony bleeding to death here.  A tip from an intel source, reporting that an American had been held at a safe house ten miles outside of Golmyra, had led them to this building, a broken down farmhouse whose original tenants had left a long time ago.  If someone had been using it as a base of operations, it hadn’t been any time recently because there was no sign of habitation, no other trash or marks in the dry, sandy soil.

            “I’m going to go outside and see if they’ve found anything,” Bucky said eventually, and James nodded and followed him out.  Half of the assault team was keeping a lookout while the others were searching the area in a grid pattern, looking for any sign of disturbances in the dirt or plant life that would indicate a grave. Bucky watched them and for a brief moment he hated them; this was just another assignment to them, maybe a little sad because it was an American they were looking for, but they had never met Tony so they didn’t have this heavy feeling of dread, the fear squeezing his throat that any second now someone was going to call out that they’d found something.

            Beside him, James kicked the dirt and Bucky stopped glaring at the operators and glanced at him, realizing that he was wearing his bad news face again. 

            “They’re shutting us down,” Bucky guessed flatly.

            James’ shoulders slumped. “Probably.  This was our only good lead in the month since he’s been gone, and it’s cold.  They’re probably going to hand this over to the main POW/MIA shop and send me back to my squadron.”

            “And send me back home.”  James had convinced his superior officers to add Bucky to his task force as a contractor, which paid well but it wasn’t like they were going to let Bucky keep wandering around Afghanistan if he were unemployed. “Why can’t I transfer to the POW/MIA office?”

            “You can try.” James didn’t sound too optimistic about his chances.

            Bucky shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away, trying to control the rage bubbling up inside him.  He knew James wasn’t to blame, he’d seen the man arguing with colonels in a way that should have earned him some disciplinary action, fighting for resources to search for Tony.  But Bucky knew what he wasn’t saying; if they hadn’t found him in the first few months, they probably wouldn’t find him for years, and he probably wouldn’t be alive when they did.

            When he was out of sight he punched the mudbrick wall of the barn, sending his metal hand right through it. The plates in his arm whirred and made tiny clicking noises as he clenched his fist and punched it again, feeling helpless. He stopped when he realized there was a real risk of bringing the building down and rejoined James who politely pretended that he didn’t hear all of that.  A few yards away the helicopter’s engines were warming up.

            “They didn’t find anything,” James said. “But we’ll put in a request for some satellite photos of this area and see if that reveals anything.” Bucky nodded and stared down at his feet.   “You know, if you do go home, maybe you’ll be able to find something on Stane that the other investigators missed.”

            “Yeah, cuz I’m such good friends with Stane.”  After Tony’s disappearance was made public, Bucky hadn’t even seen the man.  He received a notice to vacate the suite in Tony’s building that they had been living in, which had led to the surprising discovery that Tony had put it in his name, meaning that now Bucky owned half a floor in an expensive condo building in downtown Manhattan.  Stane had, however, cleaned out Tony’s lab as soon as the news broke that he was missing, claiming that everything was the property of Stark Industries and needed to be kept in a more secure facility.  Bucky had kept silent about the fact that Tony had always kept his favorite inventions in their apartment and had snuck the robots into his rooms before Stane showed up.  “You know he even tried to take my arm?”

            “Seriously? God, what an asshole. There’s no way he’s not behind this,” James fumed. “He’s shady as hell.”

            Now the helicopter blades were starting to spin lazily, kicking up swirls of dust; it was time to get on board.  Bucky spared another look at the dismal grey-brown building with its overgrown weeds, framed by mountains in the distance.   _Where the hell are you, Tony?_

***

            “Hell no.  I’m not building  _anything_  for you,” Tony said fiercely, still unsteady on his feet.  Carrying the car battery through the labyrinthine tunnels of whatever facility he was in had taken almost all of the strength he’d built up since his fever broke, but the wires weren't long enough for him to set it down without having to squat or kneel, and Tony refused to do that.

            The bald man only raised an eyebrow and nodded. “I believe you.”  He made a gesture to the men that surrounded them in a rough semicircle.  Tony expected to be killed then and there, but instead the guards just dragged him away back to his cell. 

            Instead, they came for him later that night, roughly waking him and binding his arms behind his back as they dragged him through the concrete hallways.  They shoved him to his knees in front of a trough of cold water, in a bare room lit by glaring fluorescent lights.

            A rough hand buried itself in his hair and wrenched his head back.  “You are young and think yourself strong,” the bald man said, eyes scarily impassive. “But I’ve broken strong men before.”  And then he was holding Tony’s head under the water, the edge of the trough digging painfully into his stomach.  Tony held his breath as long as he could but then he started to panic, struggling against the hand holding him down.  When spots started to cross his vision his body betrayed him and inhaled and then he was convulsing as his body tried to eject the water from his lungs.

            Then suddenly he was on the cold tile floor, coughing and retching up water.  His shoulders ached from his arms being bound so tightly and the position was straining the healing skin around the electromagnet in his chest.  Tony waited for them to ask again, to say something, but they let him have three gasping breaths before they were hauling him up and thrusting him under the water again.  The only good part was that when they finally dragged him back to his cell, Bucky was waiting for him, crouched in the corner.

            “Why?” Tony croaked.  Every part of him hurt; there were abrasions on his skin from being dragged through the floor, bruises from rough hands, and every breath was a study in pain.

            “I don’t know.  Sometimes there is no why.  Why did I have to lose my arm?” Bucky asked and suddenly instead of two working hands, like he had a second ago, one of his sleeves was empty. “Just be strong, ok? You helped me when I came home from Afghanistan, and I am going to help you get through this.”

            “I’m trying.” Tony let out a hitching breath, trying not to cough. Tears slipped silently from the corner of his eyes.  “They want me to build them a weapon."

            "But you're not gonna, right?  Because you're a fighter." 

            "I won't." Tony closed his eyes and pretended he could feel Bucky's hand in his hair, soothing the pain in his scalp.  He wanted to believe he was a fighter, but right now all he could do was lay there on the floor, tired and hurting and hungry.  First he would sleep and then maybe when he woke up he could start fighting back, start looking for a way to escape.

            "I'm gonna find you," Bucky promised, and Tony choked down a sob.  He didn't know how long it had been since the attack that had thrown his entire world upside down, but it had been long enough that the scabs on his chest were being replaced by scars, pink and shiny.  He prayed that someone would find him but deep down he was terrified that they weren't even looking, that they'd given him up for dead.  He curled up in the corner, pressing his back against the wall and pretending it was the warm expanse of Bucky's back, and recited the table of elements until he fell asleep.

 

            This time when they woke him from sleep by dragging him out of his cell, they strapped him to a table and draped a towel over his face before pouring water on it.  The next time, an attempt to use electricity to break his will made Tony have a seizure and Yinsen had to be brought in to restart his heart.  Three days passed since they had last fed him or he'd gotten any sleep.  Half the time Bucky was there in the room with the men, watching from the corner, giving Tony the courage to be the kind of man Bucky would love, that he would be proud of. Sometimes he was waiting in Tony's cell to help him claw his way back from despair.

            On the fourth day, they handed him a plate of food and a set of blueprints for an advanced missile system.  Feeling Bucky's eyes on him, Tony spat on the food and ripped the blueprints in half.  Later, when he was thrown back into his cell, wet and cold and hungry and dizzy from lack of sleep, Tony realized that the last time he'd seen those blueprints they'd been in his lab.

***

From 8-495-676-89-42 at 14:32, 23/02/2008

_Subject is not responding to coercion._

 

From 01-212-845-9090 at 15:56, 23/02/2008

_Try the drugs._

***

            The first time the unknown number popped up on Bucky’s phone he ignored it.  He did the same the second time, but when it range for a third time in five minutes his curiosity got the better of him. “James Barnes. Who is this?”  He stepped behind a newspaper kiosk to get out of the sidewalk traffic.

            “Sergeant Barnes.  My name is Nicholas Fury and I have a job offer for you.”

            Bucky pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. “Uh, I didn’t apply for a job.”

            “Well, this isn’t really the sort of job you apply for.  This is the kind that we offer, and you decide if you want it or not.  Are you interested in learning more?”

            Well, if this wasn’t some James Bond bullshit, Bucky thought.  But what the hell. “Sure. When?”

            A black SUV rolled up to the curb next to him and the passenger window went down.  In his ear his phone made the sound of a call disconnecting, and the driver, a black guy wearing an all-black suit leaned over the seat to meet Bucky’s eyes. “Now work for you?  You're going to want to clear your schedule for the day.”

            Bucky raised his eyebrows and put his phone in his back pocket. “I gotta admit, I like your style.”

            “That means a lot to me,” Fury said in a tone that said it did not, in fact, mean anything to him. Bucky suppressed a smile.  “Are you going to get in or not?”

            “Alright, but if you try anything shady I will rip this car door off and beat you with it.” Bucky climbed inside and buckled his seat belt.

            Fury gave Bucky’s left arm a significant look, where the metal was barely visible in the gap between his sleeve and glove. “I believe it.”

         ***

            The day they came with the needle, Tony had no strength to struggle.  He'd been afraid that there would be pain or more questions, but instead it brought him blessed sleep, that was thankfully not interrupted.  When he woke, there was no way to tell what time of day it was; rolling over onto his back, he realized that he was not in the small stone cell anymore but was laying on a cot in what looked like a laboratory.  He had the dim thought that he should get up and do...something, but it was far easier to just lay here and stare dully at the ceiling.

            "You need to snap out of it, Tony." A man with cool gray eyes and a metal arm was crouched by the cot, watching him sternly.  

            He turned his head and studied the face, the cleft chin and thick hair.  His heart squeezed, tears making tracks on his face. 

            "You're not really here," he whispered.  "I miss you."

            "I'm trying, Tony, I swear," the ghost said, reaching out to touch Tony's face. He closed his eyes but there was no brush of warm fingers against his skin.  "Don't forget me, sweetheart.  I haven't forgotten about you. Be strong."

            "I don't know-" _how,_ Tony was going to say, but somebody watching must have noticed that Tony was awake. The man disappeared as the iron door across the way opened with a screech of metal on metal.  He was pulled up from his cot and half-led, half-dragged to a work table in the middle of the room where a set of blueprints were spread out. Tony frowned at it and fingered the sloppily repaired rip down the middle of the pages.  A bald man came in and tapped the pages imperiously.

            "You will finish these," he said, putting a hand on the pistol at his belt.

            Tony hesitated before he pulled the pages closer.  He flipped through them, noting the huge gaps in the design of the missile.  It was an impressive concept, but the calculations for the propulsion systems were incomplete, the triggering mechanism only a rough sketch.  Under unfriendly eyes he tried to clear the fog in his thoughts, tried to concentrate, but the feeling that someone was standing over his shoulder kept distracting him.  He turned around to see that no one was there.  "No," he said finally, and pushed the pages away. "I won't."  _I can't_ , was what he was afraid of; the numbers just floated in his thoughts, with no context or meaning.

            The bald man slapped him so hard that he fell of the chair.  The man muttered something as the iron slammed shut behind him, and when he was sure they were gone Tony stumbled back to the cot.

***

            Bucky realized why Fury told him to clear his schedule for the day as soon as they hit I-95 going south.  "Going to DC?" He guessed, and Fury grunted in assent.

            "Ever heard of an organization called SHIELD?" 

            It took Bucky a few minutes to wade through all of the alphabet soup organizations he'd come across in his military career, but that was one that didn't ring a bell.  "No, I don't think so."

            "Good.  That means we're doing our job."

            Bucky gave him a skeptical look.  "I had a top secret clearance and I've been read on to more than my fair share of special access programs.  If I haven't heard of you, there's a good chance you're not worth knowing about."

            That actually surprised a laugh out of Fury.  "You don't know it, but you've worked for us in the past."

            Bucky pestered him to elaborate on that but Fury refused and eventually turned on the radio to tune him out.  He refused to get into a childish fight over the radio, so he just leaned the seat back and closed his eyes until he realized they were exiting off the highway.  Fury made no effort to conceal where he was going, but it's not like Bucky was familiar with the DC metro area; one minute they were driving through thick forests and then they were turning into a small complex, with maybe two or three buildings. Bucky noted with interest that the security guards were highly observant and heavily armed, and that the guard station came with reinforced steel pylons and easily activated traffic spikes aimed at both incoming and outgoing traffic.  Whatever this place was, they were not fucking around. 

            Fury parked in a space that was labelled "For SHIELD Directorate Only" and led him through a series of boring, indistinguishable hallways that required Fury to badge in twice. At the second one Bucky had to give up his cell phone, which meant they were about to enter a classified area.  They passed by a number of work spaces that could have been taken out of any office in the country, and it was completely silent but for the tapping of fingers on keyboards.  

            Finally Fury stopped in front of an office at the end of a long hallway.  The sign on it said "SHIELD Director," only differentiated from the other signs by the fact that it was a lot bigger and shinier looking.  They heard someone say "come in," and Fury opened the door.

            Standing behind a desk that dominated the room was a stunningly attractive woman with thick, dark curly hair that was streaked with gray. Her suit was severe, barely softened by the string of pearls at her throat, but what really caught Bucky's attention were her eyes, sharp and penetrating.  Bucky instinctively straightened to parade rest, even though he was just wearing the blue henley and jeans that he'd thrown on that morning. 

             “Sergeant Barnes, a pleasure to meet you.  I am Director Margaret Carter.  I believe you know my godson, Tony.”

  ***

            One time he woke up and realized he was slumped over at a work table, parts and tools spread out in front of him.  He frowned and guessed that he must have zoned out while working on a project, but what project? Searching the table he eventually found some blueprints with notes written on them, in what he assumed was his handwriting.   _Arc Reactor_  was written across the top, and that struck a chord in his memory. He got to work, grateful for something to work on that distracted him from the dull ache in his head and the strange pressure in his chest that made him cough periodically, though maybe that was from the chill air of his lab.

            No, not his lab.  Where was he? He put the soldering iron down and looked around him, at the metal walls and fluorescent lighting.  There were no windows, only a solid cast iron door at the far end, cluttered with machinery and work tables. Everything in the room looked familiar, but the room itself did not.  He rubbed his forehead, trying to get the ache to go away, and went back to the arc reactor.  That, at least, was satisfyingly familiar.

            Finally he was finished and he sat back in his chair, stretching his back from where he’d been hunched over for so long.  In front of him, the arc reactor glowed a pleasant pale blue, humming slightly.  Behind him he heard someone throw the latches on the door and for a moment his heart leapt; he turned, for some reason expecting grey eyes and a wide smile, but instead an older man stumbled inside as if shoved. 

            “Hey,” the man said as he approached.  He also seemed vaguely familiar; balding with a grey goatee, but his brown eyes seemed kind, if sad.  “You’re finished?”

            “Yeah,” he said, and he surprised himself with the hoarseness of his voice. He cleared his throat, and for some reason that hurt. “Why?”

            “You were building it for –for me,” the man said with a weak smile. Shrugging, he slid it over to the man.  “How are you feeling?”

            “My head hurts. My chest, too,” he said, and he started to rub where it ached and the man caught his hand.

            “You were injured there, so don’t – try not to touch it.  I’m going to fix it for you, I just need you to be patient.”

            “Ok.  I’m also a little hungry, I guess. Where’s…” He trailed off.  There was someone missing, someone who was usually here.  Who?   “What’s your name?”

            “Yinsen.”

            No, that wasn’t the name.  He felt like he’d know it if he heard it. “Nice to meet you, Yinsen,” he said anyway.  “I’m…”  His eyes widened and his heart started pounding in panic. “Why can’t I-“

            “Shhh,” Yinsen said soothingly, putting a hand on his back.  If possible, his eyes got even sadder. “It was your injury.  You’ll only make it worse if you panic.  Let’s eat and then how about you get some sleep, ok?”

            The door opened again, and this time a man came in carrying a metal tray with a few bowls of food and a cup of water.  Yinsen pulled a stool over to sit next to him while he ate, but even though he offered some the older man didn’t take any, just watched him with those sad brown eyes.   When he was done he did start feeling very drowsy so he let Yinsen help him over to a cot in the corner before he gratefully fell asleep.

 ***

From 8-495-676-89-42 at 11:04, 11/04/2008

_Subject will execute assignments while drugged, but cannot complete or initiate new projects. I assess the drugs are ultimately counterproductive for the stated objective._

 

From 01-212-845-9090 at 11:44, 11/04/2008

_We have one last alternative to try. Standby for further instructions._

 ***

             Godson? “You’re Aunt Peggy?” Bucky blurted.

            “Not to you, I’m not,” she said brusquely, her faint British accent giving her words an extra bite. “But since you’re clearly in love with him and him with you, I suppose you may call me Peggy instead of Director Carter.”

            “Yes, ma’am.” They stared at each other for a long moment before Peggy snorted in amusement.

             "At ease, soldier," she said and sat, gesturing for Bucky to take a seat in front of the desk.  Fury sat at one of the chairs that lined the side of the room.  "I understand you've been part of the search for Tony in Afghanistan."

             Bucky worked hard to school his expression.  He'd been back to New York for a week and it had been pure agony.  He'd tried to fill the empty hours by investigating Stane, but he'd been stonewalled at every angle.  Instead he'd been reduced to working himself to exhaustion at the gym and moodily wandering around the city, trying to avoid thinking about the future.  "Yes, ma'am."

              "Since the DOD doesn't want you anymore, I was hoping you could come work for us.  A man with your training, education, and assets would be invaluable."  Bucky followed her gaze to his metal hand.  "Yes, Tony was keeping me apprised of his progress," she said in response to his unasked question.

             "What kind of work?" 

             "Well, among other things, I want you to continue looking for Tony.  I don’t think Tony is in Afghanistan anymore,” she said, taking a deep breath and looking down at her desk.  “Probably hasn’t been since right after he was kidnapped.”

            Bucky frowned. “But there was a lot of credible intelligence-“

            “My standard of credible intelligence is a lot higher than the military’s,” Peggy said. “I think all of those were just to keep everyone from looking in the right direction.” She opened a folder on her desk and handed him a satellite photo of a bunch of vehicles traveling in a line through the desert, kicking up a cloud of dust behind them.  “This was taken about twenty hours after Tony was ambushed.  It’s the border between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, near Termez.  The analysts who saw this didn’t connect it to Tony’s attack because his disappearance hadn’t been made public yet.”

            “They would have had to travel almost without stopping to get from where he was attacked to the border,” Bucky said dubiously, studying the photo and the inset map that showed where the picture was taken. 

            She tapped the map.  “Our estimates are that it should have taken about eight hours to drive from the ambush point to here.  But if you detour to a safe house, conduct some emergency triage then get on the road as soon as possible…”

            "So you think he's in Uzbekistan?" Bucky tried to keep the skepticism out of his voice, but the idea that Tony was being held in an out of the way Central Asian republic didn't make any sense.  

            "No." This time she handed him a piece of paper with only four lines of text on it.  

            "This is a New York number," Bucky said, recognizing the 212 area code.  

            "The other number is from Moscow."

            Russia made more sense than Uzbekistan.  The only people who thought the Cold War was over was the US; Russia had only temporarily retreated to lick its wounds and get better at covering its tracks. "But what makes you think they're talking about Tony?"

            Peggy leaned forward to tap one manicured nail against the 212 number.  "This phone number belongs to a burner phone owned by Obadiah Stane."  The arm of his chair splintered in his left hand and his heart started pounding; for the first time in his life he literally saw red.  Peggy snapped her fingers to make sure she had Bucky's attention, and he focused on her with great difficulty.  "This information was obtained in a highly illegal covert operation, which makes it impossible to admit that it exists, much less act on it in any meaningful way, you understand?  That, and the fact that without him we may never find Tony is the only reason why that slimy bastard is still walking the Earth a free man."  

***

            They dragged him from his cell while he was still groggy from sedation, clumsy and uncoordinated.  They dumped him in what looked like a repurposed dental chair and fastened straps at his wrists and elbows to the armrests.  His hair had been shaved close a few days ago to accommodate the diagnostic electrodes and it was still short enough that the sticky pads of the electrodes could adhere to his scalp.

            “Should he be more awake for this?” One of the technicians asked as she slid a rubber mouth guard between his teeth.  “He’s still pretty out of it.”

            “No. This could be done if he was unconscious, if necessary.  Make sure you attach the sensors for the thingy,” the other one said, gesturing to the glowing blue circle in his chest, which he just noticed with a sort of dull surprise.  “Don’t want to kill him or have it blow up or something.”

            “Right.”  

            From the other side of the door a burly bearded man with a bald head entered, blue eyes hooded and penetrating.  Him, and the two men who followed him, were wearing suits that looked out of place in this medical facility.  “Is it ready?”

            “Almost, sir.”            

            His eyes followed the man as he took a seat, his followers taking up positions behind him.  A pulse of recognition tried to make itself known underneath the grogginess of the drugs, but there was nothing in the man's eyes but blank curiosity as the technicians worked on the imposing bank of computers that surrounded the chair.  After a moment the electronics came to life with a quiet hum.  The technician checked the placement of the electrodes one more time and then glanced at the man in chair as if asking for permission.

            The man nodded, and they flipped a switch.  

            He knew long, agonizing minutes of searing pain that took him out of his body before he lost time. When he came back, the air still seemed to be echoing with his screams; one of the technicians was rubbing her ear and everyone had a pinched look on their faces.  He was shivering, sweating, chest heaving and throat raw, his body flooded with the endorphins that come from a sudden absence of intense pain.  When they unfastened his restraints he scrambled to get out of and away from the chair, falling to his hands and knees when his body failed him. 

            The man stood and approached. A hand under his chin urged him to sit back on his heels, and the man used his grip on his chin to turned his head from side to side, eyes studying him impassively.  “This look really doesn't suit you," he said cryptically. "What’s your name?”

            “I..I don’t know.” Another shiver wracked his body.  His thoughts were clear now but his mind felt like it had been scraped clean.  

            The man struck him across the face. “Incorrect. You don’t have a name. You are no one. Let’s try again. Who are you?”

            “No one.”

            Leaning over, the man taps the circle of glowing light in the middle of his chest. “This is the only thing keeping you alive, and if I decide that you are no longer valuable, I will take it back and leave you to a slow and painful death. Understand?” He barely heard the man’s question, staring down at the device in chest in horror.  Suddenly there was a buzzing sound and a pain in his chest that made him double over, gasping. “Repeat after me,” the man said. “‘Compliance will be rewarded. Defiance will be punished.’”

            “Compliance will be rewarded.  Defiance will be punished,” he repeated quickly.

            The man sat back down in his chair and looked pleased.  “Good.  See that you remember that, I don’t like to damage my assets unnecessarily.” He snapped his fingers and someone scurried to his side, carrying a thick roll of blueprints. “It’s time to start demonstrating your value now,” he said as he spread out the blueprints on the floor.  He ran his finger over the tear in the blueprints and the man dropped a pen in front of him.  "Finish them."

            He turned the pages until he came to the first incomplete schematic, and as his eyes skimmed the page numbers and equations filled his mind, vectors and thrust ratios, and he bent over the page and started writing as fast as he could. 


	3. Surviving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The more of this story I write, the more it seems there is to write. So enjoy! There's going to be another chapter after this one! *whimper* But I am bloody determined to get this thing done before the end of the month, so stay tuned.

            Because Aunt Peggy was not a woman to waste time, Bucky was on a flight to Termez the next day.  Even though they were almost certain that Tony was no longer there Peggy had sent another agent there weeks ago to try to follow the trail to where Tony had been taken, and that agent was supposed to be waiting for Bucky at the airport.

            Bucky went down the stairs from the tiny airplane and paused on the tarmac, staring at the tiny, one story building that was Termez airport.  It was so small that baggage claim was just a corner of the terminal with a sign, and the airport workers just wheeled in the luggage bins straight from the plane and let passengers dig through the pile for their bags.

            He grabbed his duffel from the pile before anyone else could and threw it over his shoulder, and when he turned towards the exit he almost ran into a woman who _definitely_ hadn’t been there a minute ago.

            She was wearing thick shades and had a hoodie over her head to try to muffle the impact of her deep red hair, diverting the attention instead to the impressive amount of cleavage revealed by the strategically lowered zipper. She had her hands in the pockets of her tight jeans, drawing eyes to the lush curve of her hips. Bucky raised an eyebrow at the coy smile on her lips, and as he watched she tilted up her shades and looked at him from under her eyelashes.  He could see the signals she was sending out loud and clear, and with a stab of grief he realized that if Tony had been standing here, looking under his eyelashes and biting his lip like that Bucky would have already been on his knees.

            “Hey there, handsome, need a ride?”  Even her voice was enticingly husky.  Bucky was starting to wonder what in the hell Peggy was trying to pull here.

            “If it’s in a car, yeah.  If not, then you’re um,” he gestured at her vaguely, “barking up the wrong tree.”

            The smile didn’t disappear, but as she put her arm in Bucky’s and led him out to the parking lot, the tone of it shifted to one of humor.  “Gay or taken?”

            “Both.”  Bucky threw his bag in the trunk of a Russian sedan that had seen better days, but when the woman got behind the wheel and cranked it, the engine purred like it was brand new.  “My names is James Barnes.”

            “I know. Should I call you James?”   

            “Sure.” 

            “You can call me Natalie.”

            Bucky eyed Natalie, who’s come hither bedroom eyes had become cool and professional as she drove, managing the car easily in the no-holds-barred traffic headed into the city.  “So where are we going, Natalie?”

            “I’ve got us a place.  Once we get there I’ll fill you in on what I’ve learned so far.”  That was said in voice that didn’t have time for negotiation, so Bucky just dug his sunglasses out against the bright desert sun and let her drive.

***

            Finishing the blueprints took him hours, kneeling there on the concrete floor under the watchful eyes of the bearded man.  When he was finally done he handed the plans back to the man, who spread them out on the table to examine.

            “Good.  You may prove to be a useful asset yet,” the man grunted.  Then he turned to face the asset and gave him an avuncular pat on the cheek, where it still stung from his earlier blow.  “The more things you design for me to build, the better things will be for you.  Understand?” When the asset nodded, the man said, “Take him back to his room.” Two men guarding a door behind the asset came and lifted him to his feet with rough hands under his arms, half-guiding and half-dragging him to a room down a length of hallway before shoving him through an iron door.  Behind him, the locks made a sharp noise as he studied his surroundings.

            He wandered past the work tables cluttered with tools and machine parts, with what looked like half-finished projects and dissected electronics.  As he went through the drawers he found more incomplete blueprints, piles of notes with ideas scribbled on them, but nothing that gave him a clue to who or where he was.  There was a cot piled with blankets on the far side of the room, and a door led to a small, sparse bathroom.  A brief search revealed that there were piles of clothes under the cot, so he took some of them to the bathroom to shower.

            As he stood under the tepid, intermittent spray he ran his hands over this body that seemed so unfamiliar, the stubble on his scalp, the device in his chest that was surrounded by ugly, raised scars.  There were no tattoos, no other interesting marks.  His body was as blank and uninformative as his mind.

***

            Natalie led him up a few flights of stairs in a Soviet-era tenement building, the cement on it cracked and paint flaking.  But the door she led him to was new and had an impressive number of locks on it, and once they got inside Bucky saw that the hinges were reinforced.  Natalie had clearly done the best she could to make the inside comfortable; cheap rugs hid the concrete floor and curtains lined the walls, giving the room the look of a colorful tent.  It was a studio apartment, with the bed in one corner and a couch in the other, and a tiny kitchen separated from the rest by a low bar.  The refrigerator fit under the counter and the stove was just a countertop burner plugged into the wall. There was one other door in the room that was closed, which was presumably – hopefully – a bathroom.

            “Hope you like soup,” she said with a smile, and Bucky dumped his bag in the corner next to the couch.

            “First I’d like a nap, but do you want to fill me in now?”

            Her smile faded to a small quirk of her lips.  “I am going to go visit someone that I hope can give me some new information, so why don’t you get some rest and we’ll go over everything in a few hours?”

            “Alright,” Bucky sighed as he kicked off the shoes.  As much as he hated the wait, he was definitely not at his best after three connections to get here.  He headed for the couch but she tilted her head to the bed. 

            “You’ll sleep better, and it’s not visible from any of the windows,” she explained.  He must have looked surprised because she shrugged ruefully.  “It’s not like I _think_ there’s a sniper looking in the windows, but the dead ones never do, do they?  Just good habits.”

            Bucky grunted and fell onto the bed face first and the last thing he heard was her locking the door behind her.

 

            The light in the room was noticeably dimmer when he woke up, and he had time to wash his face in the tiny closet bathroom – which had a toilet but no shower – and then Natalie was letting herself into the room, carrying a couple of bags of groceries.

            “I wasn’t kidding about the soup,” she said as she emptied the bags, setting an onion, tomato, celery, carrots and a small bag of noodles on the counter.  “Unless you know how to cook?”

            Bucky shrugged.  “I could probably figure something out if you show me where the grocery store is.”

            When she was done in the kitchen she joined him on the couch, digging underneath for a file that wasn’t terribly thick for someone that had been gathering information in the country for weeks now.  She spread out all of the files on the coffee table.

            “Director Carter told you about the convoy here, yes?  After the first week, I was able to track them to this safe house at the edge of town,” she said, setting out a couple of photographs.  “This group seems to have a fondness for old farmhouses, probably for the seclusion.  They seemed to have stayed there for a few days; the only reason anyone remembered them was because they were looking for some type O blood.”

            “For Tony,” Bucky said, voice remote. Natalie’s eyes flickered up at him and there was sympathy there before she glanced back down at the file.

            “Yeah, probably. I got a description of the guy that always came to pick it up, but it’s not terribly helpful.  I’m not an artist or I would have tried to get a description.  The only name my contact ever heard someone call him was “al-Peshwari.”

            “Not terribly helpful.”

            “Nope.  Anyway, the farmhouse itself was a dead end.  Owners died, the son lives in London now and doesn’t want anything to do with it.  But the guys wanted to change vehicles, they sold the vehicles we saw in the satellite photo for two UAZ Patriots, a Russian-made SUV, and a UAZ-452, a minivan. Ugly vehicles, but functional.   One of the SUVs went back across the border a week after it was purchased and was last seen headed back towards Pakistan.”

            “Al-Peshwari was heading home?”

            “Presumably.  The other two left a few days afterwards, heading north.  My guess is they went to a private airfield to avoid any unnecessary questions, and those are all going to be near the capital.”

            “Ok. So what are we still doing here?”

            Natalie sighed and shuffled the papers back into the folder.  “This past week I’ve been talking to all of the cell phone vendors in town to see if I could dig up any phone numbers connected to these guys.  I also tracked down the original vehicles from the photos, because they had already been resold.  One of them had some suspicious looking stains on the back seats so I sent a sample back to Director Carter for analysis.  Also, for an operation this smooth, they’ve got to be getting instructions somehow so I’ve also been going to every hole in the wall internet café and downloading the user history off of every computer for analysis as well.”

            Bucky sighed and sat back against the couch, scrubbing a hand over his face.  This was the kind of boring scut work that made him become an operator instead of an intel pogue.  The look in Natalie’s eyes softened.  “Director Carter told me this was personal for you.  She told me to be thorough because we’re also trying to build a case against Obadiah Stane.  Between his  money and, you know, the law, we’ve been getting nothing, so the other option is to try to find something on this end.”

            “I get it.  So how can I help?”

            She held up a USB drive.  “We make a copy of this and we can probably get the last of the internet cafes tonight.  Then we’ll head up towards Samarkand and see what we can find.”

***

            The next time the asset woke up, he pulled out the disorganized pile of notes and blueprints in his desk and started sorting them. One of them had “arc reactor” written on it, which gave him a name for the device in his chest.  Others were less clear. One seemed to be for a prototype prosthetic, which made him eye his arm suspiciously for a moment.  Another one said, “Repulsors,” and he recognized the propulsion system from the missile blueprints he recently finished.  But on this page, scribbled almost intelligibly at the bottom was “use in planes? jet pack?  Flying cars???? FLYING SUIT??” with a tiny drawing of what looked like a robot with flames coming out of its hands and feet.  Instantly the image came to mind, so clear it could only be a memory- it wasn't a robot, it a weaponized suit of armor that could fly.  He pulled a blank sheet of paper out of a separate drawer and his hand flew over the page, making notes.  Powered by the arc reactor, using the hydraulic mechanics of the prosthetic to allow the power of movement for the man inside, the repulsor technology for flight.  Adding munitions would be easy. 

            When the page was covered, front and back, he sat back in his chair and looked around at all the work tables.  Would it be possible to make a prototype with what he had in this room?  He pulled a clean sheet of paper out and started making a list of what he would need.  There was an excitement burning under his skin to get started, but he was not excited to draw the attention of the bearded man again, so he set his notes and the list to the side.

            He looked back at the drawing of the robot and saw a tiny arrow pointing to the edge of the page.  Flipping it over, he saw a cartoon sketch of a man who looked like he had been in an explosion, hair sticking up, black marks on his face and a look of surprise.  Under it was written, in a spiky handwriting much different from his own, “T- remember the microwave when you’re busy playing the mad scientist :) - ILU, B.”

            The asset’s pulse spiked and he realized his hands were shaking so he put the page down, flattening his hands on the table. If this was meant for him, then he was T.  Thomas? Tim?  Was this supposed to be a picture of himself? He glanced around the room but there were no mirrors, not even in the bathroom.  Running his fingers over the spiky writing he wondered what “B” stood for, if it was a man or a woman.  ILU.  I L you.  _I love you._  

            He realized he was crying when a drop of wetness hit the page, threatening to smear the ink.  That’s when he realized someone might be watching him so he slid the page in the pile with the others and put them back in his desk. 

***

            The airfields were a bust.  Everything after the mysterious convoy left Termez was a bust, and they wasted entirely too much time in Uzbekistan figuring that out.  More than once Bucky suggested heading straight for Moscow to start the search there based on the intercepted text conversation, but Natalie always just shook her head.  “It’s a cell phone, James, it could be _anywhere._ All that number proves is that it was purchased in Moscow.”

            “So we have nothing?” He would challenge, and she would just shake her head again and they would move on to the next part of their fruitless mission.  But the truth they had a hard time facing was that Tony and his kidnappers had disappeared and could be anywhere by now.

            Natalie must have eventually reported as much to Director Carter because one day in Samarkand she drove them to a tiny, hole in the wall used book store and came out just a few minutes later, hugging something to her chest.

            “New mission,” Natalie said as she climbed into the truck.  “Does any of this look familiar?” She passed him a thick manila envelope filled with pictures.  Bucky pulled them out and looked through them.   Many of them were schematic breakdowns of a new missile system that said “Stark Industries” on the side, but he hadn’t run across anything that looked like this while he was in the military.  Halfway through the stack something caught his eye, something bright blue in the middle of metallic panels and white wires.

            He straightened and handed Natalie back the pictures he’d already gone through, flipping quickly through the rest of that hint of blue.  The second to last photo had a direct view of it.  “This,” he said, waving the photo at her.  “This is an arc reactor.  Tony designed this while he was building my arm.  But he never would have put it in a missile, last he told me he was trying to get away from building weapons.  What are these? What does this mean?”

            Natalie took the photo from him and added it to the stack in the envelope, looking troubled.  “Stane just recently demoed this at a weapons convention in Switzerland.  According to Director Carter’s experts, it is lightyears past what Stark Industries has been building lately.  Far too advanced, in her opinion, to come from anyone currently employed in their R&D department.”

            The sudden spike of hope in Bucky’s chest was almost suffocating.  “Does she think it’s Tony? That Tony designed it?”  The thought that Stane had kidnapped Tony and was holding him captive in order to force him to keep designing those motherfucking weapons he loved so much made Bucky want to punch something, but the flip side of that was that it meant that Tony was alive, he was fucking _still alive_ , and Stane had a reason to keep him that way.

            “Maybe,” Natalie said.  She turned in her seat and put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder so that he faced her as well.  “Listen, James, I know this seems promising, but remember, Stane also got his hands on everything that Tony was working on in his laboratory.  This might just be evidence of Tony’s swan song, not Tony himself.”

            Bucky’s laugh at that was bitter and damp.  “Tony did build a miniaturized arc reactor back in New York, but it wasn’t in his lab when Stane cleaned it out.  We were using it as a night light in the bathroom.”

            Natalie stared at him.  “Analysts calculate that thing is putting out enough energy to power a small city, and you were using it as a night light?”

            Bucky shrugged and wiped his face on his sleeve.  “That’s Tony.  He also uses what’s probably the first artificial intelligence ever created to order pizza.”

            She got that soft, sympathetic look in her eyes and crawled over the center console to sit in Bucky’s lap, wrapping her arms around him in a slightly awkward hug.  “He sounds like quite a guy,” she murmured, and Bucky quit pretending and rested his head on her shoulder, letting the tears fall.

            “God, just let him be ok,” he whispered hoarsely, and Natalie held him a little tighter.

***

            The first thought he had when he woke up was, _I am T._ Todd? He had the hope that when he found the right name it would _feel_ right, and then he could have that, he could have a name. Ted?  He sat up and went back to his desk, ready to continue working on-

            He froze.  The papers he had been working on were spread out on the desk.  There was the grating sound of metal on metal and the iron door to his room opened. As he turned to face the door there was a high-pitched buzz and pain sent him to his knees.

            The bearded man walked in while he was still gasping for breath around the fire in his chest.  “I _thought_ we had an understanding last time I was here,” he said with disappointment. “What did we agree? Compliance will be…”

            “Rewarded,” T managed.

            “And?”

            “Defiance…will be…punished.”

            The man waved the page with the cartoon drawing on it in front of T’s face.  “Whatever this is, hiding it definitely isn’t compliance, which means it’s defiance. Grab him,” he ordered the guards, and then turned back towards the door.  “Time for the chair again.”

            When they were done, the guards dragged the asset to a room full of tables and tools, dropping him onto a cot in the corner.  The bearded man followed them in and tapped one of the tables where a bunch of pages covered the top.  “I like this idea you have here.  I think it will be revolutionary if you can make it work.”  Picking up one of the pages, he read it quickly.  “I’ll get you what you need.  I expect to see some progress over the next few days, understand?”

            “Yes,” the asset whispered.

            “Yes what?”

            “Yes, sir.” 

***

            Bucky agreed to switch seats with Natalie and let her drive them back to the hotel while he nursed a headache. 

            “So what does Peggy expect us to do with this information about the missile?”

            “Do you think it would be reasonable to assume that Tony would have been needed to supervise the manufacture of this prototype? Because then if we could figure out where it was made, we might be able to pick up Tony’s trail.”

            Bucky rubbed his eyes tiredly as he reclined the seat.  “I don’t know.  All of Stark Industries’ missiles are made in America, I remember Tony commenting-”  he stopped suddenly and sat up, meeting Natalie’s suddenly alert gaze.  “Could that arrogant asshole have taken Tony right back to the US?”

            “It would explain a lot,” Natalie said slowly, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. “For example, why we haven’t picked up any more communications between him and the Russian.”

            “If Tony is designing weapons again, it would be risky to trust something like that to a middle-man, right?  I bet there are dozens of companies that would love to get their hands on something like that.”

            Natalie was quiet for a long time, staring at the road, and he could see the calculations going through her head.  “I’ll tell Director Carter about this, but in the meantime, Stane is conducting a weapons test of the new missile outside of Ankara.  That might be as close as we’ll be able to get to him anytime soon.”

            Bucky lay back on the seat with a sigh. “Right. Ankara.  Can we spring for a nice hotel?  With two beds? You move a lot in your sleep.”

            “Probably not.  Sorry.”

 

            “Is this what being married feels like?” Bucky muttered two days later as they squeezed past the crowd at Esenboga International Airport in Ankara to get to the taxi stand.

            “What do you mean?”

            “I feel like if you do that little giggle thing again I’m going to stab you.” Natalie flashed a rare, real grin at him for that.  They had been pretending to be married since Termez and Natalie’s favorite persona was of the ditziest Valley Girl to ever drop out of a Hollywood movie and it was driving him crazy.  Or perhaps that was the chronic lack of sleep talking; he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since Rhodey knocked on his door almost four months ago.

            Christ. Four months.

            While Natalie negotiated with the driver in passable Turkish, Bucky changed out the SIM card in his phone and logged in to check his email.  His phone chimed with notifications, and as he scrolled through them one made him sag against the taxi door. 

            “James? What’s wrong?”

            He just turned his phone towards her so she could see the notification that he’d put on his calendar ages ago: _Tony’s Birthday!!! :D_ “He’s twenty-two,” Bucky said, voice raw. “He should just be graduating from college, not- not-“

            Natalie took his hand in hers and squeezed.  “I know, James, I’m so sorry.  We’re going to find him.  We’ve already got two strong leads, all we have to do is pull on them and everything will start to unravel.”  Bucky just nodded and swallowed around the lump in his throat.  “But tonight, we drink.”

             Six hours later, Bucky was guiding an unsteady Natalie back to their hotel.  “You drink like a Russian,” Natalie accused with the carefully enunciation of the truly drunk, leaning on him as he tried to open the door to their hotel room.

            “How would you know?” Bucky caught her when the door finally gave way, helping her inside and kicking the door closed behind him.  “You drink with a lot of Russians?”

            “You have _no_ idea.”

            Bucky smiled and led her over to the bed, which she fell into gratefully while he got her one of the bottles of water from next to the bathroom sink.  They had gone out and she had tried to match him drink for drink, but while Bucky didn’t even feel so much as buzzed she had gotten pretty blitzed.

            “You’re going to want these,” he said, nudging her hip so she would sit up for the water and painkillers in his hand. 

            “Thanks, you're a peach,” she said as she tossed her head back to swallow.  “Have I told you yet how nice it is to be around someone that doesn’t want me?” she asked as she fell back on the bed.

            “Um…ok?”

            “Like, I can do _this_ ,” she said as she pulled off her shirt, revealing a simple but flatteringly cut black bra, “and you barely glance at me.  It’s _so nice._ Relaxing.” She wiggled out of her pants as well and tossed them to the side, where they landed on the struggling air conditioner.  

            Bucky shook his head, a reluctant grin curling the corner of his mouth.  “You’re drunk, go to sleep.”

            “And why aren’t _you_ drunk?” She mumbled sleepily. _That’s a good goddamn question,_ Bucky thought as he ran his face under the water at the sink and rinsed the taste of alcohol from his mouth.  _I’ll add it to the list when we find Tony._

            The sadness that he hadn’t been able to forget about with alcohol was still a hard lump under his sternum, making the prospect of squeezing into that bed next to Natalie and trying to sleep entirely unappealing.  After a moment of indecision he grabbed one of the room keys and let himself out, closing the door as silently as possible behind him. 

            He walked aimlessly for about an hour before it occurred to him that he could go by the dead drop and pick up the documents Peggy had sent them.  Maybe they’d have which hotel Stane was going to stay at; he and Natalie where here a week early to recon the test site and establish their covers, but the prospect of getting the drop on Stane and asking him a few pointed questions was very appealing.  Bucky knew intellectually that torture was an ineffective way of getting information, but today he was willing to give it a go just for the fun of it.

            The dead drop was an out of service pay phone booth that smelled so strongly of piss that it made Bucky’s eyes water.  He held his breath and found the documents wrapped in plastic and taped under the eaves of the roof.  As he walked quickly away he peeled off the plastic and paged through everything, learning to his disappointment that Stane was actually being hosted by a Turkish senior defense department official at his villa an hour outside of Ankara. 

            There was something unexpected in the stack of paperwork that caught his eye – a series of Top Secret reports hot from Afghanistan with a bunch of exclamation marks at the top.

            As Bucky read it his steps faltered to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. “Holy shit,” he whispered, as he started over from the beginning.  A member of the Ten Rings, finally tempted by the half-million dollar reward for verifiable information regarding the current whereabouts of one Anthony Edward Stark, had spilled the whole story of his kidnapping.  He described the ambush, the kidnapping of the only known doctor in the region to conduct emergency surgery on Tony at the farmhouse, and then the drive to Termez.  All of it lined up with what they’d already learned on their own, but the real value of the reports was the list of names on the last page.  Bucky had no idea what made this guy want to change sides, but this list made Bucky want to get back on a plane heading as close to Afghanistan as he could get with a civilian passport.   _Someone_ on this list either knew who gave the order for the kidnapping or knew someone who did.

            Bucky took a deep breath and realized his hands were shaking.  As he slid the papers back into the folder he realized he definitely wasn’t getting any sleep tonight.

***

            The asset lay back on his cot while the doctor took his vital signs and examined his chest. “Despite everything, you seem to be doing well,” he commented finally, putting the stethoscope and blood pressure cuff back in his bag.

            “Despite everything?” The asset repeated curiously as he sat up.

            The doctor’s hesitation was almost imperceptible. “You almost died,” he said after a moment, gesturing at the arc reactor.

            “Is that why I can’t remember…” _anything,_ he almost said, but that wasn’t true.  The gaps in his memory were entirely personal. “My past?” he said instead, watching the doctor carefully.  He suspected the gaps in his memory had more to do with the chair that was his first distinct memory, but he was curious as to how the doctor would respond.

            The doctor pretended to be busy organizing his bag, but when he finally met the asset’s eyes his gaze was sad.  “Your memory loss _is_ a result of trauma,” he said as if he were agreeing, and the asset recognized both the truth and the dodge but he didn’t press any further.  They both knew where the cameras were, and that someone was always watching.  The doctor held up an oblong box and shook it slightly, making it rattle. “Do we have time for a game?”

            The asset nodded. “Compliance is rewarded,” he muttered under his breath as he cleared off a space on one of his work tables.  In the corner of the room a metal man stood, looking menacing with its blank features and matte black paint.  In the center was a hole where it waited for the arc reactor to give it life.

            “So it’s finished?” The doctor gestured at the mechanical suit with his chin as he opened the box and started to arrange the pieces for a new game of backgammon.

            “Yes.  I think I will be given a target for testing soon.”  He ran his hand over his hair, which had grown long enough in the past few weeks that he could actually comb his fingers through it.  His beard was also growing in, itchy and aggravating, but he kept forgetting to ask for a razor.

            “They’re having _you_ test it?” The doctor said in surprise as he made his first move. 

            The asset shrugged one shoulder as he rolled the dice.  “They have a very effective leash,” he said simply, tapping the device in his chest. 

            “Engineer and attack dog, two for one special,” the doctor said under his breath, barely audible over the clatter of the dice.  In anyone else’s hands there would be the risk that they would fly off with it and make millions selling it to the highest bidder, but as long as they could turn off his heart with the push of a button, the asset would always return.  “Well, if so, be careful,” he said loudly for the microphones.  “I have worked very hard to keep you alive, do try to stay that way.”

 

            The doctor needn’t have worried.  The first target was destroyed without incident. So was the second, and the third, and the fourth.  When the bearded man came to the lab he was very pleased, which is why the asset was taken by surprise when the guards held him down and started shaving his head.  He started to struggle but a warning buzz from the arc reactor made him go limp, staring at the ceiling and pressing his lips together tightly as his hair fell to the floor.

            “I know you’ve been very compliant,” the bearded man said, “but this is for your own good.  Think of it as less punishment than…routine maintenance.” 

            The guards led him down the hallway, giving him a shove whenever his footsteps dragged.  He had no memory of going to down this hallway but he knew it anyway, and the dread in his stomach made him nauseous.

            “Go ahead, have a seat,” the man said genially, gesturing at the chair.  “When you're done we’ll have a chat.”

***

            “Destroyed? What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”  Bucky shouted, holding a hand over his other ear so he could hear through the phone better.  Getting a secure connection to Peggy had been in the pain in the ass and it was really low quality, so he sincerely hoped he had just misheard her.

            “You heard me,” she said crisply.  “Someone has been attacking the Ten Rings and destroying their bases.  More than half of the names on the list I sent you are confirmed dead.”

            “ _Fuck_!” Bucky turned and paced angrily.  “Think someone is cleaning up loose ends?  If Stane thought that the informant in the Ten Rings could lead back to him…”

            “My thoughts exactly.”

            “Ok, well what is the military doing about it?”

            “As you can imagine, they’re not too concerned about saving the terrorists, even though I’ve tried to point out that they may have valuable information about Tony.  They are more worried by the fact that this is happening in their backyard right under their noses.”

            “Well, who- or whatever it is should lead back to the person ordering the attacks, right?”

            Peggy was silent for a long time, and even Natalie was starting to look at him suspiciously.  “What, exactly, is going through that damn Yankee brain of yours, Sergeant Barnes?” she asked flatly.

            “Send me back to Afghanistan,” Bucky said.  “Natalie can do this spy stuff just as easily without me.  I’ll extract the intel targets for interrogation, and-”

            Peggy exhaled long and loud.  “And if you find what’s blowing up these bases you’re just going to what, punch it into submission with that arm of yours?”

            “Well…yeah,” he said, scowling at how Peggy made the idea sound stupid.  “Peggy, I have to do something.  I’m going crazy here.  I know this is how things get done, through good intel work, but there was a reason why I made a career out of - of shooting people, not talking to them.”       Natalie snorted and he gave her the finger, waiting for Peggy to answer.  “It’s been-“

            “I _know_ how long it’s been, Barnes,” Peggy snapped. “Very well.  Go to Afghanistan if you must.  Just, for God’s sake, don’t get yourself killed before we find Tony.”  Then all he heard was the dial tone.

            “She must be pretty desperate to agree to let you wander around Afghanistan and try to get blown up,” Natalie commented, watching him pace.

            “Yeah, well,” Bucky grunted and threw the phone down on the bed.  “Jealous?”

            Turkey had been a bust, the security around Stane had been too tight, so they had followed him to Lagos and Pretoria trying to find a way to get close to him.  In Pretoria they had given up on subtlety and just broken in to his hotel room, but it had all been for nothing.  There hadn’t been anything the least bit incriminating in his luggage or his laptop, no unusual meetings in out of the way places, no side trips.  When Stane returned to New York Peggy immediately put him under private surveillance but it was almost like he knew he was being monitored because his routine had been positively dull.  

            Meanwhile, while they were in Pretoria the Russian phone number pinged off a cell phone tower in Volgograd, receiving a coded set of coordinates from a new US cell phone number.  The coordinates appeared to lead to a tiny bed and breakfast outside of Sochi, a popular ski destination that was pretty much deserted this time of year.  So they had raced here as fast as possible, with Director Carter even shelling out for private jets.  When they arrived the hostess had assured them that they were her first guests all month so they’ had settled in to wait, pretending to be a clueless wealthy American couple on a hiking/photography trip.  

            Unspoken but understood between them was the tense knowledge that if this lead also didn’t pan out, that they were out of clues, out of leads, and their only option was to head back to the States and hope Stane did something stupid.

            “As much as I enjoy shooting people, war zones aren’t really my thing,” Natalie said, sitting up and throwing her legs off the side of the bed. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and batted her eyes at Bucky.  “Are you ready to go to dinner, pookie? I heard, like, the hostess say that she makes the _best_ pelmeni, and does that just seem _so_ authentic for our trip to Russia?”

            “I hate you.”

 

            “This really is very good pelmeni,” Natalie said as she washed down a bite with some cheap Russian wine.  Bucky nodded in agreement, though at that particular moment he would have traded every bit of food in the building for a single hamburger.  He almost choked when Natalie kicked him in the shin, and that’s when he heard what she had seen over his shoulder. Someone was coming in to the dining area, talking to the hostess in gruff Russian. “Do you like it, sweetie?” she asked and slid her had into his, tapping his wrist three times.

            “Delicious,” he agreed, and they must have been looking at them because she came out of her seat and leaned across the table to give him a kiss.

            The hostess seated them a few tables away and Bucky was able to get a look at them out of the corner of his eyes while seeming intent on his dumplings. Judging from the ill-fitting suits and looks of general suspicion two of the men were security, and the other one had the bearing of a military man, bald and bare faced with a pretentious spectacle in one eye.

            Thankfully Natalie was able to keep up a steady stream if inane commentary about their day that allowed Bucky to just give single word answers, since it was taking all of his self-control to just stay in his seat.  He remembered _not responding to coercion_ and thought about how he could crush the man’s skull like an egg.  One of the guards would die before they even knew what was-

            He was distracted by a sharp pain in his right hand; looking down, he saw that Natalie was digging her fingernails into the back of his hand where he was clutching a butter knife like a dagger.  Her smile was flirty but her eyes were screaming a warning at him. “What do you think, honey?”

            “I’m sorry,” he managed.  “My thoughts were a million miles away…sweetie.  What did you say?”

            Natalie rolled her eyes playfully. “I _said_ -“

            An explosion in the parking lot shattered the windows in the building, and everyone but the shocked hostess hit the ground immediately.  Glancing over, he saw that Natalie had produced a small snub-nosed pistol so he pulled a knife from his boot as the bodyguards were starting to hustle their ward from the floor and towards the back of the building.

            Bucky was scrambling to his feet to intercept when something kicked in the front door, ripping it from its hinges, and what looked like a solid black robot strode in, lit only by two glowing eyes and a bright blue circle in the middle of its chest.  One of the guards stopped to fire at it while the other kept dragging their ward to the back door, but the robot ignored the bullets, throwing him against the wall with a backhanded blow.  Natalie started to fire at it as well, drawing its attention, and it raised one palm at them.  There was a high pitched whine and Bucky dragged her to the floor just as a burst of light flashed overhead, blowing a hole in the wall where she had been standing.

            “Get the Russian!” he shouted, ears ringing, and as she nodded he gave her a shove towards the back while he charged the robot.  His left fist connected with its face with a loud clang and it staggered backwards.  He followed it, surprisingly able to block its swings with his right arm without it shattering completely, though it did hurt like hell. He managed to back it against the wall and focused on the glowing light in the center of the chest plate; this close, he could see that it was an arc reactor so with a growl of rage he dug his metal fingers into the chest plate, trying to rip it out.

            Then he realized the robot was screaming “ _no, stop!_ ” and in surprise he did.  Narrowing his eyes, he ripped the robot’s face off.

            “Jesus Christ!” Bucky said, stumbling away from it, staring in shock.  “Tony?”

            There wasn’t a hint of recognition in his face, only panic as Tony's eyes darted towards the back of the building. There was another high pitched whine and Bucky had just enough time to turn his left arm towards the blast and then he was blown backwards, shattering a mirror and a whole shelf of alcohol as he hit the wall behind the bar. He felt a flash of heat and light as Tony barreled past him towards the back exit.

            “No,” Bucky gritted, rolling to his hands and knees, trying to get to his feet despite the fact that he was seeing double and his shirt was wet with blood. “No!  Tony!” He staggered down the hallway, using the walls for balance as he followed, still screaming Tony’s name. The back door was leaning crazily on the hinges and Tony was hovering a few feet off the ground, clearly looking for the Russian and his guard.  Bucky took a deep breath and sprinted across the yard, leaping to get a hold of Tony’s boot. 

            Tony dropped a few feet, low enough that Bucky could dig in his heels as Tony tried to get away, and then the other foot was crashing into his head and everything went black.

***

            The asset sat still and submitted to the back-handed slap that the bearded man delivered, tasting blood in his mouth.  He never figured out how they learned the things they did, but now he just accepted that there was no action he could take that they didn’t monitor, almost no thought he had that they couldn’t read.  So he took that blow, and the next, and was grateful that it wasn’t worse.  Until a hand gripped the back of his neck and tightened down until the pain had him gasping, shoving him down until his forehead was almost touching the floor, and then he remembered.

            _Mission failure._

            The asset closed his eyes and tried to force his limbs to relax when they stiffened instinctively.  Fighting back would just make it so much worse.

            “Who was it?” A voice growled in his ear. 

            “I don’t know.”

            “He clearly knew you. Who was it?”

            “I don’t know,” the asset repeated, hoping that his handler would accept the truth. The word _Tony_ went around in circles in his head but every time he tried to concentrate on it he could feel a headache growing, like pressure in his head.

            The device in his chest buzzed and the asset flinched instinctively. “What did he call you?”

            “T-tony. He called me Tony.”

            “Is that your name?”

            This was familiar. The asset relaxed a little, hoping that the worst was over. “No.”

            “Do you have a name?”

            “No.”

            “Who are you?”

            “No one.” _Tonytonytonytony-_

            “What are you?”

            “An asset.” There was a snort and then the hand on his neck was shoving him sideways, almost to the floor.  There was the sound of boots moving away; the asset’s arms ached from holding himself in this position, almost genuflecting, but he knew better than to move.

            “No.  You are a failure.”

            The dread in the asset’s stomach coalesced into a hard knot of fear, sending ice crawling under his skin.  His heart started pounding and if his hands hadn’t been braced on the cold concrete floor, they would have been shaking.  _No,_ he said, his lips moving silently. _Please-_

            “Is it ready?” The voice said, and an affirmative came from the other room. “Good.  Get up,” the voice ordered, but the asset couldn’t make himself move.

            The boots returned and the device in his chest buzzed again, another warning. “Get. Up.”

            The asset climbed to his feet slowly, keeping his eyes on the floor. Then there was a sharp pain lancing through his chest and he fell back to his knees with a sharp cry that echoed in the concrete room.  A hand gripped his chin tightly and wrenched his head back, and cold blue eyes met his. “Next time, don’t make me say it twice,” and then the pain came again, the device in his chest went from a buzz to a high-pitched whine, and this time, thankfully, the asset blacked out before they put him in the chair.


	4. Rising Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you really want to crank up the sad feels, here's some of what I was listening to while I wrote:  
> [When Bucky gets the news](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dtywPNWqTI&list=LLsN1Iz-gaf5pXfP9qC7hsDA&index=31)  
> [Bucky when he's alone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vCSIPv-e4&list=LLsN1Iz-gaf5pXfP9qC7hsDA&index=14)  
> [From Bucky to Tony, when he comes home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PozAdGd_xR8&index=11&list=LLsN1Iz-gaf5pXfP9qC7hsDA)

            The next thing he knew, there was something cold and wet on his face.  He flinched away and heard Natalie make a soothing sound.  “Welcome back, Bucky.”  She went back to dabbing at his face with a wet towel; when she drew back he saw that the towel was bloody. 

            “He’s gone?”

            “Yeah. But we got the Russians,” she said, gesturing with her head to Bucky’s left.  Turning his head with difficulty, Bucky saw that there were two men lying zip-tied and unconscious a few feet away.  “Wait, what do you mean, he?”

            “It was Tony,” he said hoarsely, staring at the sky.  From not too far off he heard sirens, and now that his adrenaline had faded he was feeling every single one of his wounds but none of that mattered.

            Tony had looked right at him, and didn’t know who he was.

            “James?” He jumped when he realized that Natalie had probably been saying his name for a few minutes now. “We gotta go.  If we get the locals involved, our Russian is probably going to disappear.”

            “Didn’t our vehicle get blown up?”

            “Actually, no. _Their_ vehicle got blown up.  I parked us under the streetlight at the entrance to the driveway, so our car is fine.  Can you get up? You’ve got a pretty nasty head wound.” Bucky held up a hand and she took it, helping him sit.  When that was accomplished with only a 50% increase in his headache but no dizziness or sudden flow of blood, he climbed carefully to his feet. 

            “Let’s go.”  Because Natalie was apparently a goddess in human form, she already had their bags ready and waiting in the car, she only needed Bucky’s help to get the Russian inside the trunk.  The bodyguard they left ziptied in the back yard for the authorities.

            When they were done, Bucky climbed into the car, sighing with relief when he could sit down again; all of the walking and lifting just made his headache that much worse. He barely had time to buckle up before Natalie was pulling away, just in time to see lights in their rearview mirror.

            “Was the hostess ok?” Bucky asked belatedly, digging through his bag for some pain reliever.

            “I didn’t talk to her but she didn’t seem to be bleeding.  I just hope she has insurance.”

            “Did you get in touch with Director Carter?”  He grimaced as he swallowed them dry, then leaned his seat back and closed his eyes.

            “Yeah.  She told us to take the ferry to Trabzon and someone will be meeting us there for the Russian.”  Bucky just grunted to show that he heard her, and the car was silent.

            “Want to talk about it?” She eventually asked, voice soft.

            “Nope,” he said, without opening his eyes.  He felt her put a hand on his knee and squeeze gently.

            “I’m sorry, James.”

            “You know what, after everything, why don’t you call me Bucky.”

            There was a slightly puzzled silence then she said, “Ok.  If you want, you can call me Tasha.”

            “How do you get Tasha from Natalie?”

            “How do you get _Bucky_ from _James_?”

            “Buchanan is my middle name.”

            “Oh.” She was quiet for a moment. “Natasha is the name I was born with,” and even though that sounded like a hell of a story, Bucky just put his hand on top of hers until she pulled her hand away to drive.

 

            As they were waiting in line for the ferry, the Russian started making noise in the trunk, so Tasha grabbed what looked like a makeup bag and went around to the trunk.  After a moment, the noises faded, and when she came back to the car she was putting a syringe back into the bag.

            “What?” she said as he stared at her in amazement.

            “I’m going to guess you were the one who had brought the zip ties, too?”

            “Yeah…”

            “If there’s ever a zombie apocalypse, can you be on my team? You make the Boy Scouts look impulsive.”

            She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Deal.  A metal-armed super soldier wouldn’t be a bad team-mate either.”

            “Super soldier?”

            She gave him a funny look like she didn't know if he was being serious and tilted the rear view mirror his way.  “Look at the wound on your head.”

            Frowning, Bucky grimaced as he moved his hair out of the way, stiff and still slightly tacky with dried blood.  “Remind me to cut my hair soon.”

            “I kind of like it,” she said with a shrug, turning the car on as the cars ahead of them started to inch onto the ferry.  “When its, you know, washed and shampooed and combed.”

            Bucky barely heard her because he was staring into the mirror. “Are you talking about this wound right here?” He said in disbelief.  There was a long gash, about the length of his finger, that was still scabbed over but the swelling had already gone down some and the edges of it were pink with healing skin.

            “Yeah, that’s the one.  I don’t know if you were paying attention, but when you jumped up to grab T- when you made that jump before you got kicked in the head,” she said, glancing at him, “you went like, six or seven feet off the ground.  That’s not normal.  Putting down a bottle of vodka without feeling it isn’t normal.  Not sleeping for three or four days at a time is also not normal. See where I’m going with this?”

            Bucky leaned his seat back and closed his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

 

            Turns out, the person that was meeting them in Trabzon was Nick Fury.  “Holy shit you got here fast,” Bucky said incredulously, when he saw the black clad figure waiting for them at the ferry dock.

            “I was already in the area.  Where’s the Russian?”

            “Sleeping in the trunk.”

            Fury nodded. “There’s a private airfield next to the airport here.  We’ve got a plane waiting.”

            “Shotgun,” Tasha said and went around to the passenger side of the car while Fury took the keys from her, leaving Bucky to slide into the back seat with a scowl. The drive was short and uneventful, and even transferring the limp body of the Russian from the car to the plane was surprisingly unstressful.  Turns out, sometimes it really was that easy to kidnap someone and take them across international boundaries.  Once he was loaded Bucky loitered on the tarmac, not quite sure what his next step was.  He knew that the Russian was probably the key to cracking Stane, but he still had no intention of going back to the States if there was the slightest possibility that Tony would appear in Afghanistan.

            “I spoke to Director Carter,” Fury said as he came back down the plane’s short stairs to the tarmac.  He handed Bucky an envelope. “Here are your orders for Afghanistan.  You’ll be working with Lt. Rhodes again.”

            Bucky took the envelope with a nod and noticed Tasha leaning against the doorway.  “Not coming with me?”

            “Like I said, war zones not really my thing.  Besides, someone has to make sure this guy cracks and tells us everything we need to bring down Stane.”  She met him halfway down the stairs for a hug. “Go get him, Bucky,” she whispered. “Bring him home and introduce us.”

            Christ, the thought put a vise around his chest. Who was Tony going to be when he eventually found him?  The one who made him trick dice or the one who looked him in the eyes and didn’t know who he was?   The one who put out a dog bowl full of spare nuts and washers for his robots or the one who kicked him in the head?

            Suddenly he swayed against her, breath coming short and fast as his heart started pounding. Tasha’s arms tightened around him as he shuddered and sighed raggedly, eyes burning.  “It will be ok,” she murmured, “I promise, everything will be ok.  You can do this, I know you’re strong enough. You’re a super soldier, remember?” she said when a broken sound ripped its way out of his chest. “Just keep fighting for him.”

            She held him until he was steadier, rubbing small circles on his back.  When he pulled back, his eyes were dry; it felt like where the tears would be there was just a riptide, waiting to pull his feet out from under him. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and as much of a smile as he could manage and then joined Fury on the tarmac, who had been tactfully doing something on his phone while they spoke.

            Bucky pulled his orders out from the enveloped and skimmed them as Fury put his phone away, partly to see if there was anything he had a question on but mostly to avoid looking at Fury.

            “You’re going to need to make a report,” Fury said after a moment. “About what happened in Sochi.”

            “I will,” Bucky said gruffly.

            “But feel free to take a shower first.  You look like shit.”

***

            The asset studied the damage to the metal suit in front of him, running fingers over the deep gouges in the metal. When he’d been brought to the room the bearded man had pointed to it and said, “fix this, and quickly,” before the door slammed shut behind him.  The asset had showered first and changed clothes, which he would have recognized as his post-chair ritual if he’d had the memories to show for it.

            The damage to the suit struck him as odd somehow, and he’d been staring at it for a while now trying to figure out why.  It wasn’t from a bullet, or a knife, or anything else he could think of.  He put his fingers in one of the gouges and then realized there were five; then suddenly the pattern became clear. It was a hand.  But it would have taken a hand of unusual strength to do this, one made of metal or…

            He turned to his desk with long strides, pulling out a folder from the bottom with a schematic he remembered seeing when he was looking for the prints for the metal suit.  A prosthetic arm and hand, with titanium alloy struts and vibranium plates.  He spent a long time looking at the damage and his notes before he put them away and started milling a new chest plate.

***

            “Hi Lt. Rhodes! How’s the weather?” Bucky said cheerily, surprising James at his desk in the watch center.

            “Sergeant Barnes? How in the hell did you get here?”

            “I told you I would walk if I had to,” Bucky said with a shrug, and if anything, James’ gape got bigger. “Just fucking with you. Director Carter of SHIELD sent me, here are my orders.” He handed James his envelope.

            “You’re the new intel liaison?”

            “Guess so.  I hear you guys have been having a problem with terrorist bases blowing up without proper authorization.”

            “Alright, come on.  I’ll find you a desk."  James stood and gestured for Bucky to follow him through the rows of analysts and operators currently monitoring the air traffic in Afghanistan.  "Why do I feel like you have a hell of a story to tell me?”

            Bucky took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “You don’t know the half of it.”

 

            “This is a dumb idea.” James’ voice was tinny where it came through the comms.

            “You’ve said that already,” Bucky whispered, scanning the sky with his night vision goggles. About a hundred yards away was the Ten Rings’ last known base in Afghanistan, and they were on high alert, guards pacing, people in the watch towers scanning the sky and ground. It had taken all of Bucky’s years of training and his newfound strength to get this close, and he’d been camped out here for seventeen hours already, sweating under a sniper’s ghillie suit as he waited for Tony to show.

            “You should have backup.”

            “You’re not that far away.” At James’ sigh of exasperation Bucky said, “Is this what you’re like around Tony? No wonder he calls you a wet blanket.”

            He grinned at the sound of James spluttering on the other end. “He really calls me that?”

            “No, but the fact that you didn’t deny it says a lot.”

            “Have we met the same Tony? Me being a wet blanket is the only reason he survived college!”

            “So I’ve heard.”  He listened with half an ear while James grumbled, still scanning the sky for a heat signature. Everything was quiet for another hour then James made a noise.

            “Heads up, you’ve got incoming!”

            James’ warning gave him only about thirty seconds of warning, enough time to shed the suit and start sprinting towards the base before there was a roaring sign and a flash of light overhead. Then with a deep _whoomp_ an explosion lit up the night and then there was shouting and gunfire as the terrorists tried to see what was attacking them.

            Since he knew what to look for, Bucky could see the dull reflection of the fire off the matte black of Tony’s flying metal suit as it surveyed the chaos.  Something on the suit’s shoulders parted and what looked like tiny rockets emerged, destroying the few buildings that remained standing.

            Bucky vaulted over the chain link fence, ripping off the concertina wire at the top, and sprinted past the panicking terrorists.  He skidded to a stop almost underneath where Tony was hovering and pulled a grappling gun from the harness on his back and fired.  It wrapped around Tony’s ankle just as he was starting to move away, pulling him up short and dragging Bucky a few feet along the ground.

            Bucky took advantage of his surprise and managed to wrap the grappling cable around the leg of the watchtower, gears in his arm whirring with effort as he tried to pull the Tony out of the sky.  It was slow progress, inch by inch, then the metal suit suddenly changed direction and charged Bucky, making him fall to the ground with the sudden absence of resistance.  He rolled with it and came up sitting on its chest. Ripping the faceplate off again Bucky threw it away, desperate to see Tony’s eyes.

            Just like last time, there was no recognition in them, only fear.  Unlike last time there were purple and green bruises on his cheek and temple, a small split in his lip. Bucky swallowed an angry growl and held Tony down with his metal hand right over the arc reactor.

             “Tony, whatever is going on, whatever they told you, you don’t have to do this,” Bucky pleaded.  Tony’s eyes flickered to his metal hand and back to his face, brow furrowed.  “Please.  Look around you.  You’re killing people.  That’s not the man I knew.”

            Tony only stared at him, wild-eyed.  Then a bullet ricocheted off Bucky’s metal shoulder, making a sharp soun.  Bucky snarled and brought up the rifle he’d been carrying slung over his shoulder, sending the shooter and the two men behind him to the dirt.

            Taking advantage of his distraction, Tony rolled and threw Bucky off of him, climbing awkwardly to his feet.  Bucky scrambled to stand as well and they stood there in a frozen tableau while the rest of the base scurried around them, trying to escape the flames.  Then he heard something buzz and Tony did a full body flinch before taking two steps back and disappearing into the sky.

            Bucky watched him until he couldn’t see the light of his thrusters anymore, and prayed that they didn’t discover the tracking device until Tony got back to wherever they were keeping him. Then another round of gunfire reminded him that he should probably not stick around too much longer, so he slung his rifle over his back and disappeared into the night.

 

            By the time he got to the rendezvous point, Tony was already out of Afghanistan air space and halfway through Turkmenistan.  When they got back to base, Tony was passing over Caucasia and not slowing down.

            “Fuck,” Bucky breathed as he watched the tracker move relentlessly east.  “We were right.  He’s been in the US almost all along.”

            “Get Director Carter on the phone,” James ordered an airman, who scrambled to obey.

            Bucky collapsed into a chair, head buried in his hands. “God, I hope I haven’t just signed his death sentence,” he said almost inaudibly. If Tony was going to Stane, and Stane noticed the tracking device, there was every chance that he would put Tony on the list of loose ends that needed tidying up.

            “We knew this was a risk,” James said, voice so carefully controlled that Bucky knew he was terrified too.  “It’s in the Director’s hands now, and there’s no one I would trust more.”

            Bucky swallowed and nodded.  “I know I won’t make it in time, but I still gotta try.”

            “I know.  The helicopter is already waiting to take you to Bagram.”

***

            Before they came for him, and he knew they would, the asset grabbed a pen and scribbled _u r Tony? Man w/metal arm_ on his thigh, under his clothes, and in those minutes while he sat, waiting for the bearded man, he thought of grey eyes looking at him, _seeing him_ , and he didn’t feel so alone.

 

           Almost an hour later, he heard the bearded man before he saw him.

            “I don’t care what it takes, I’m sick and tired of that man existing on this planet! Deal with it!” The bearded man was roaring into a phone as the guards opened the door to the asset’s room. “Come on,” he said imperiously, gesturing, and the asset hurried to comply. “At least this time you completed the objective before he found you,” the bearded man muttered, still doing something on his phone as he led the procession down the hall. The asset’s heart leapt at the thought that the man with the metal arm had been looking for him, had found him before.

            The asset, for once, didn’t fight being put into the chair, too terrified that the defiant notes he’d written to himself would be discovered if the guards or technicians were forced to lay hands on him. But the bearded man was too distracted and irate to notice the unusual docility.  As the asset was strapped down and the electrodes fastened to his scalp, he closed his eyes and tried to remember the face of the man with the metal hand, the intensity in his eyes, the movement of his mouth as he spoke and prayed he’d have the memory on the other side of-

***

            When Bucky landed in L.A. an agonizing twelve hours later, Tasha was waiting for him again, this time wearing some kind of black uniform that looked like she was planning to infiltrate an enemy base and kick some ass.

            Bucky prayed that was true.

            “The tracker signal is live, which is probably a good sign,” she said as she led him out to the pickup zone where a black suburban was waiting for them.  “It is currently at Stane’s mansion a little south of here, which is why we had your plane redirected from New York.” 

            “That motherfucker,” Bucky swore.  Months of beating feet in central Asia and the bastard had been holding him prisoner in SoCal.

            “Yeah.  We were right.  Not that we could have proven it, until now,” she said, putting the vehicle in gear and hitting the gas hard enough that Bucky was pressed back against his seat.  He reached over his shoulder and put his seat belt on.

            “Russian didn’t cave?”

            “Oh no, he sang like a soprano, but after Stane sent for Tony and brought him to the US, the Russian had no idea where he went.  There wasn’t enough for a warrant for Stane’s private residences.”

            Bucky stared incredulously. “Are you serious?”

            She raised an eyebrow and rubbed her thumb against her fingers.  “Same problem we’ve been having, Stane’s money builds an invisible wall around him.  And we couldn’t shop around too much without drawing his attention.”

            “So what are we doing now?”

            “As soon as we guessed where Tony was heading, Director Carter sent me and one of her other agents to keep an eye on Stane and make sure he doesn’t do anything…unfortunate.  He disappeared for about thirty minutes soon after Tony arrived, but other than that we’ve been able to keep eyes on him.  No one has left the building,” she emphasized, and Bucky understood what she meant. If Stane _had_ killed Tony, his body was still inside, for what that was worth.  “But he’s just been working at his desk all evening, so if he did anything he’s remarkably calm about it.”

            Bucky snorted.  “Look what he’s gotten away with so far,” he said bitterly, watching the lights of the city smear by.  Having driven with her on roads where traffic laws were only a reality on paper, watching the way she smoothly wove in and out of LA traffic while pushing ninety miles an hour didn’t even make him think twice.  “Wait, so if there’s no warrant, what are we going to do?”

            “Well,” Tasha drawled and pointed over her shoulder at the duffel bags piled in the back seat.  Leaning over Bucky dug through them and found a small arsenal of knives, rope, rifles, pistols, and ammunition.  “That’s kind of where you come in.”

***

            The asset sat on the floor of the shower, staring at the writing scrawled on his thigh. _U r Tony Man w/metal arm_. Tony. His name was Tony. He didn’t know what the other part meant, but he hoped it would become clear because he – a previous him, a him he didn’t remember – had thought it was important to remember, as important as his name.  He smiled in satisfaction as he scrubbed off the writing and got dressed. 

            Not _all_ defiance was punished, it would seem.

            He paced around the room with the tables and came to a stop in front of the metal suit looming ominously in one corner of the room.  Leaning slightly to one side, he noticed that the light was reflecting oddly off the chest plate.  He came closer and noticed that it was slightly dented, right over where the device in his chest fit inside.  Running his fingers over it, he noticed that it was in the shape of a hand, one slightly bigger than his own.  He disengaged the chest plate and flipped it over to get a better look at the damage and noticed something attached to it, tucked right under the edge of the metal where it overlapped with the arc reactor.  It was small and flat, about the size of a quarter but more flexible.

            Peeling it off, he took it over to his work desk and started prying it apart. When he peeled back the flexible plastic covering, he took one look at the wiring and realized it was a tracking device. Frowning, he leaned over the desk and considered the tracking device.

            He knew one was already built into the suit _and_ into his arc reactor.  There would be no reason for the bearded man to add another.  So it was someone else. Someone who Tony encountered while wearing the suit, someone who could make a hand print in the gold/titanium alloy of the metal suit.

            A man with a metal arm could do that damage. 

            The man with the metal arm was looking for Tony.

            Tony considered the damage to the chest plate again.  Someone who could do that kind of damage could probably do a lot worse…and didn’t.

            He hid the tracker under his mattress and reattached the chest plate to the suit and waited.  He had the feeling something big was going to happen soon.

***

            “So I’m the advance scout, is that it?” Bucky said as he sorted through all of the weapons Tasha had brought along and picked out his favorites.  He was still wearing the combat rig he’d had on it Afghanistan, which was probably smelling pretty ripe by now but it had plenty of holsters and straps and was reinforced Kevlar, so he wasn’t about to change.

            “Yep, and we’re the cavalry.”  Tasha introduced him to her partner for this assignment, an unassuming, sandy haired man she called Clint.

            “Hey, I’m James,” Bucky said, holding out a hand for the man to shake.  The man frowned and shook his head, pointing to his ear where Bucky just now noticed a hearing aid. “Oh, um.” Bucky pulled deep from high school memories and laboriously signed _J-A-M-E-S_.  He hoped.

            Clint grinned widely.  “I’m just fucking with you, I can hear as long as my hearing aids are in. And I can read lips.  But you get mad bonus points for trying, even if you did misspell your own name.”  Clint gestured to the sniper rifle strapped to one shoulder.  “I’ll be your eyes in the sky for this.”

            “Sounds good.”  Bucky patted himself down, making sure everything was secure, and then added a few more magazines to his belt. 

            “So you know Stane is probably not going to call the cops, so you’re going to have to make enough noise to convince the neighbors or some other upstanding citizen to call, ok?” Bucky raised an eyebrow and glanced around.  Like most mansions, Stane’s home was situated on a huge plot of land; the nearest house was barely a glimmer through the trees.  He would probably have to fire his weapon in the front yard for the neighbors to hear.

            “So which one of you is going to be the upstanding citizen?” He asked, turning back to the others.

            “Don’t worry about this end, go do the Rambo thing you’ve been wanting to do for months now,” Tasha said, jerking her head towards the seven-foot cast iron fence surrounding Stane’s mansion.  “Need a boost over the fence?”

            “Nope,” Bucky said, grabbing one of the bars and bending it to the side, then doing the same to another one until he had enough of a gap to squeeze through.  “Super soldier, remember?”

            “What the fucking fuck?” He heard Clint say behind him, then Tasha was hushing him and telling him to get into position.

           

            Bucky checked all of the outbuildings first, rolling his eyes at the extravagance of a single, sixty-year-old man having a pool building, a guest cottage, a storage shed, and a freestanding garage.  Tasha had said that Stane had disappeared for only thirty minutes, which implied a basement lair, but from Bucky’s recon he couldn’t see where something like Tony’s suit could go in or out of the basement without going through the house first. 

            Until he came to the far side of the mansion, farthest from the driveway, and noticed that a new garage door had been installed and the gravel in front of it had oversized footprints in it rather than tire ruts.  The lock on it was mechanical, of course, so Bucky just grabbed the handle on the outside and pulled until there was enough of a gap to get his fingers in then he pulled it all the way up with the screeching complaint of metal and a crunch of gears.

            On the other side of the door was a well-lit concrete hallway, currently populated by four very startled looking guards.

            “Oh, hey guys.” Bucky glanced around as if he just noticed his surroundings. “This isn’t my garage.”

***

            Tony jumped at the screech of metal, then leapt to his feet at the sound of gunfire. He turned to the suit and hesitated for a moment before he clenched his jaw with resolve and climbed inside.

***

            When the guards were on the floor, bleeding and moaning, Bucky reflected as he kicked a gun away that it might have been easier if he would just stop forgetting that his arm was made of one of the strongest metals on earth. 

            “Heads up, Stane disappeared as soon as the shooting started,” Tasha said in his ear.

            “Like, left the house disappeared?”

            “Strangely, no.” Bucky frowned.  That was odd, and when ‘odd’ came up in conjunction with a mission things always went sideways.  He examined the long hallway in front of him as he reloaded; there were four doors and an elevator at the far end.  One of the doors was cast iron, two secured by an electronic lock, and then one that just looked like a regular fucking door.

            Years of gaming made him suspicious of things that looked _too_ ordinary, so he checked the regular door first.  It had regular garage things, which made him roll his eyes.

            He took a deep breath and faced the iron door, which was secured with a ridiculous amount of locks.  “Tony, if you’re in there, it’s me…Bucky,” he said, and he hoped it meant something. “I’m going to try to open this door, ok? So don’t shoot me,” he finished under his breath as he braced his feet and started pulling on the door.  One by one the locking mechanisms snapped, and he almost fell over when the door suddenly gave way.

            Then he backed up warily when on the other side of the door, Tony was wearing the metal suit.  But the face plate was raised, and Tony was studying him with a line between his eyebrows.

            “I’m Tony,” he said, like he was asking for confirmation.  “Your name is Bucky.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Do you have a metal arm?”

            Bucky glanced down at his left arm, which was almost completely covered by long sleeves and a glove.  He pulled off his glove and let it fall to the floor, waving his metal fingers at Tony. “Yeah. You, um, made it for me.”

            “That would explain why I still have the blueprints,” Tony said, almost to himself.  “Why are you here?”

            “I’m here to rescue you,” Bucky said, gesturing to the broken doors and the guards on the floor.  “Uh, haven’t you been held prisoner here?”

            Tony’s smile at that was tired and sad. “Yes.  But not by the doors and the guards.”  He tapped the arc reactor in the center of the suit.  “He can kill me at the push of a button.”

            Bucky didn’t understand. “We don’t need the suit, just get out of it and let’s go-“

            Then the suit unfolded with a series of whirs and clicks and Bucky realized what he meant. “Holy shit it’s _in you_ ,” he blurted.  “What-“

            There was a loud crash and the building shook as one of the other doors down the hallway was ripped off its hinges. Another metal suit stomped into the hallway, larger and bulkier than Tony’s, a utilitarian metallic grey instead of matte black.

            “Sergeant Barnes,” Stanes voice came out echoing out of the suit, grating and mechanical.  “I’m so glad to have the opportunity to kill you myself. You,” he said, pointing to Tony, “will watch. Step away from the suit.”  He chuckled nastily at the look on Bucky’s face when Tony obeyed. “Sadly, he won’t know why him watching you die is so tragic.  Maybe I’ll explain it to him later, before I make him forget you. _Again._ ”

            Stane aimed an arm at him, and a plate on the side opened up to reveal what looked like the barrel of a fifty-cal. Bucky didn’t wait to find out; he turned on his heel and sprinted as fast as he could out of the hallway, vaulting off a wall into the darkness outside when bullets started chewing up the concrete floor behind him.

            “Got a problem, you guys,” he shouted breathlessly into his communicator, running more or less aimlessly through Stane’s yard.  The thought that Stane maybe had made a suit of his own had not figured into their calculations _at all_ , and now Bucky didn’t know if he should keep him away from public spaces or lead him to places where there might be backup.

            “Yeah, we heard. Working on it,” Tasha said coolly. “Lead him towards the back of the property.”

            A rocket blast on his left threw Bucky sideways, and he managed to twist just enough to turn it into a roll instead of falling flat on his back. It wasn’t the most graceful landing, but he was on his feet and managed to keep running just as Stane landed on the grass right where his head had been a few seconds ago.

            “You can’t out run me, Barnes,” Stane growled. “You’ll just die tired.”

            Then something shot out of the darkness and hit Stane in the shoulder.  Bucky heard a high pitched beeping noise and then there was an explosion that rocked Stane on his heels.  The armor was blackened and bent, but when Stane rotated his arm there was no loss of movement.

            “Aw, man,” Clint said in his ear.

            “There seems to be a lot of exposed moving parts at the groin, where there’s not much plating,” Bucky panted. “Try that.”

            “You just want me to blow Stane’s dick off.”

            “That would be a bonus.”

            But the explosion must have spooked Stane because he flew up and backwards, hovering close to the roof of the house as he started shredding the yard with the fifty-cal on his arm. Bucky cut right and started leading him away from Clint, praying that “bullet proof” included fifty caliber bullets which could normally cut a man in half.  

            “We need to get him lower,” Tasha said.

            “Yeah, yeah,” Bucky said, protecting his head with his left arm as he plowed through the decorative wooden door to the freestanding garage. He found the light and searched for something that could help him drag Stane to Earth just like he did Tony in Afghanistan.

            Then Stane was crashing through the ceiling and landed on an Aston Martin, crushing it.  “This is all your fault, you know,” he said.  “Your bleeding heart ideas made Tony want to be a _philanthropist,_ ” he spat, and aimed his palm at Bucky.  There was the high pitched whine that he remembered from Tony’s suit and the circle in his palm got brighter. 

            Bucky threw himself to the floor but the blast never came. He raised his head and saw that Tasha had thrown herself on Stane’s back and was stabbing into the gap between the helmet and the shoulder plates with what looked like a short sword. Stane roared and turned, trying to throw her off, and Bucky launched himself at his chest, curling his flesh hand around one of the chest plates and clawing at the arc reactor with the metal hand like he was digging for gold.

            He made it halfway through the casing before Stane grabbed him and threw him into the far wall of the garage.  His arms weren’t flexible enough to reach Tasha, but when she saw that he was backing up with the intent of crushing her against the wall she leapt to the side.  When Stane raised his arm at Tasha Bucky growled and flipped the crushed Aston Martin at Stane like he was flipping a table, sending him crashing through the wall of the garage.

            “Jesus Christ, Bucky,” Tasha gaped for a second, and Bucky tried to act casual even though he couldn’t really believe it either. His shoulder was aching from using the metal arm so much, but Bucky vaulted through the hole in the wall anyway just as Stane was trying to get to his feet.

            Something whistled as it flew through the air and then a black cord wrapped itself around Stane’s neck, jerking him off balance and he fell on his back again. “Get the power source,” Bucky shouted over his shoulder at Tasha while he dug his fingers into the suit’s helmet, trying to rip it off so he could punch Stane in his smug fucking face. Behind him he heard Tasha trying to saw through the metals and cables holding the arc reactor in place.

            But Stane shook them off like a bear and activated the repulsors in his boots and palms, going into the air and out of their reach.  “You know what,” he spat, the arc reactor sagging crazily in the ruined chest plate, “since I have my own suit, there’s no real reason to keep Tony around anymore, is there? This suit will have Stark Industries raking in billions for decades to come.”

            “Bucky, gimme a lift, I think I can reach him,” Tasha said at his side, shaking her wrists and shoulders out like she thought Bucky was actually going to straight up throw her at a murderous madman.

            From out of somewhere an arrow hit Stane right on the inside of his right thigh.  With a flash of light and the high pitched sound of a bug zapper, and the repulsor on that side went dark.  Stane wobbled in the air and came closer to the ground and aimed a small rocket at the copse of trees where the arrow came from. Bucky grabbed Tasha and turned his back to the splinters flying through the air like tiny knives, wincing when some of them found skin.

            “I don’t know if we can keep going like this,” Bucky shouted over the roar of the flames.  “Eventually I think he’s going to get tired of playing with us and just set fire to everything.”

            Stane was just turning his gun toward Bucky and Tasha when Tony's black suit tackled him in the side and drove him into the ground, throwing up clods of grass and dirt. Bucky wanted to cheer but instead he just sprinted to where the two suits were throwing punches at each other.

            “ _I’m done being your asset!_ ” Tony shouted through the suit’s speakers, and he wrenched the arc reactor the rest of the way out of Stane’s suit, throwing the glowing circle to the side as Stane’s suit went limp. Stooping, he tore Stane’s faceplate off and stared the man in the face for a long moment, and before Bucky could stop him he shot Stane in the face with the repulsor.  He turned to face Bucky, hesitating as if he wanted to say something, but instead he shot into the sky.

            Bucky sagged to the ground as they watched the receding light of Tony’s suit disappear.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry. So sorry. It just keeps getting longer *sobs*


	5. Kintsugi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The finale! With reunion sex and tooth-rotting sappiness!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kintsugi: the art of mending broken pottery with gold or other precious metal.

            Tony flew hard and fast away from the look of horror on the man’s – on _Bucky’s –_ face.

            Seeing it had made him queasy and then he panicked, suddenly and irrationally afraid of being punished.   So he flew until the impulse to hide was stronger than the impulse to flee, spending the last few hours until dawn hiding in a falling down barn in the middle of an overgrown field.

***

            “Peggy, you don’t understand. _We have to find him._ ” Bucky gripped the phone so tightly that it made a creak of distressed plastic, so he switched hands as he paced.  Behind him, the copse of trees were burning sullenly and the sound of sirens was splitting the night.

            “Sergeant Barnes, he will come home when he’s ready.  If he what he needed was to be alone right now, what are we going to do, drag him back home by force?”

            “You don’t understand. He doesn’t remember _anything_ about who he is. Even before he was kidnapped, how long do you think he could have lasted out on his own without money?”  Peggy’s silence on the other end spoke volumes. “I don’t know why he ran, but I don’t think he can make it out there on his own.  He has no money, no ID, nothing.”

            “You’re right," She sighed.  "I’ll put out a bulletin to all the police departments to keep an eye out for that metal suit and send them a recent photo of Tony.”

            “Thanks, Peggy.” Ending the call, he turned to Tasha and Clint.  “I’m going to go check out the rest of that fucking basement before the cops get here and turn it all into a crime scene.”

            Clint was squinting at him hard, trying to read his lips by the light of the fire. “My hearing aids were busted in the explosion,” he explained, a little loudly. “But you said cops, so I’m going to bounce. I’ve got a bit of a record, I don’t want to complicate things.”  With a two fingered salute he jogged away through to the back of the yard, climbing the fence and vaulting easily over it.  Tasha watched him go with a sour expression.

            At Bucky’s questioning look she said, “He just hates dealing with all the paperwork that comes after, the lazy bastard,” then she was following him back to the rear of the mansion.

            None of the guards, even the ones that Bucky had only wounded, were alive.  Either by accident or on purpose, Stane’s initial barrage of gunfire in the confines of the hallway had done it for them. When he saw the twelve foot by twelve foot room that Tony had been living in for the past few months, however, his sympathy dried up.  There was a cot in the corner of the room with a small stack of clothes piled under it, and a bathroom pretty much the size of a coat closet at the far end. The rest of the room was occupied by every table, desk, tool, machine, and spare part that Stane had cleaned out of Tony’s lab in New York. 

            Bucky clenched his jaw and exhaled slowly, then went to the next door, the only one that hadn’t been opened yet.  A quick yank on the door handle crushed the locking mechanism and it opened freely.

            “What the hell?” The room had the sterile look and smell of a medical suite but was dominated by a leather and metal chair surrounded by a bank of computers.  Tasha examined one of the straps attached to the chair arms and Bucky had the urge to go back outside and kill Stane again.  “Stane said that he could make Tony forget things,” Bucky said tightly.  “Think this is what he meant?”

            She showed him the nest of wires at the head of the chair and the box of disposable electrodes on the ground under the chair.  “Probably, yes.”

            “Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department!” A voice yelled from the hallway.  “If anyone is in here, come out slowly with your hands behind your head.”

            Natasha sighed and started tossing her weapons onto the floor. “Here comes that paperwork.”

***

            The next day, hunger eventually drove him out of his hiding place.  After long moments of consideration, he landed the suit in a city large enough to get lost in but not so big to be overwhelming.   He wandered into a public library and haunted the banks of public use computers long enough that one of the librarians, noticing the bruises on his face and the haunted look in his eyes, logged him into a computer.  She also wrote down the names and addresses of a couple of shelters for him to look into.  She tapped one of them saying, “These people will feed you, too,” which is how Tony noticed that he was holding his stomach, trying to make it stop hurting.

            Tony stared at the list as she went back to her desk.  Guess he _was_  sort of homeless now, and an abused runaway at that.

            He set the list aside and opened a web browser, staring at the blinking cursor before he typed “bucky metal arm.”  When nothing useful came up he remembered that the bearded man had called the man “Sergeant Barnes,” so he changed the search terms.  Immediately articles came up with Bucky’s photo on the front, hair much shorter than Tony remembered, smiling and standing next to one Tony Stark.  He traced his fingers of Bucky’s smile as if it were Braille and could tell him why this man was willing to risk death to rescue him, then he stared at pictures of his own face for a long time.  The internet had a lot of him, him wearing suits, on the beach, out to dinner.  In more than a few of him mostly naked, and none of those showed him with an arc reactor in his chest. 

            Bucky had looked horrified at that, too, Tony remembered, and the thought made him hunch his shoulders defensively.

            All of the articles with Bucky in them were talking about the revolutionary technology Bucky’s arm represented, and in one Tony was quoted as saying that Stark Industries was poised to be at the forefront of medical technologies for the foreseeable future.

            Stark Industries.  The bearded man had mentioned that as well. 

            No, Tony corrected himself. Obadiah Stane.  “Longtime family friend of the Starks,” he read, lip curling.  A search on him yielded dozens of articles detailing the bizarre events surrounding his death, and despite Bucky’s horrified look, Tony couldn’t bring himself to regret killing him. The discovery of the lab and the chair in the basement – Tony quickly scrolled past the pictures, heart pounding – brought up speculation about its connection to the tragic disappearance of Anthony Edward Stark over eight months ago.

            “Sir?” Tony jumped at the soft voice and sudden appearance of the librarian at his shoulder.  “The library is closing.”

            He nodded and closed the internet, then sat on a curb in the parking lot while the library got dark and the cars all pulled away. He ran a hand over the stubble of his hair, wishing it would grow already so he could forget the sticky feeling of electrodes being taped to his scalp. He regretted running, he wanted to find Bucky again and apologize for – for, well, not killing Stane, but…he’d think of something.  Something to make Buck not look horrified, or wary, or sad.  He wanted to find Bucky and make him smile again like he did in the pictures, but there was no way he was going back to Stane’s house, and he had no idea where to go next.

            Tony looked up at the sound of tires crunching on gravel and asphalt.  The librarian rolled her window down and gave him a sympathetic look.  “I was afraid you’d still be here.  I brought you some food,” she said, handing him a bag through the window.  Tony could smell the cheeseburger already and it made a sharp pain go through his stomach.

            “Thank you,” he said, eyes stinging.  He cleared his throat. “Um, what city is this?”

            “You’re in Jackson, Tennessee,” she said patiently, apparently used to dealing with the indigent community.  “Please go to one of those shelters to be safe tonight, honey. You hear? The one at the top is the closest.”

            “I will, thank you.  And thank you for the food.”

            “You’re welcome.”  She drove off and he unpeeled the wrapper off the burger slowly, wondering how much it had cost.  Not much, he knew, but that’s when he realized he was going to go home, whenever he figured out where home was.  The prospect of finding Bucky and being just Tony, and not _Anthony Edward Stark,_ playboy genius billionaire, had crossed his mind more than once, but as he ate that cheeseburger he decided he was going to come back and give that librarian a thousand dollars for every penny that she spent on it.

***

            “Absolutely not, Sergeant Barnes. You’re not staying here. _Go. Home._ That’s an order. You are officially on leave until further notice.” Peggy’s eyes said she was so serious that if she had to get someone to carry Barnes out the door, she would.

            “I can sleep at Tasha’s house,” Bucky argued, glancing at Natalie, who looked back at him with a raised eyebrow. “She has a place here in DC, in case you hear about Tony.”

            “You can sleep in Tasha’s car while she drives you to _your_ place,” Tasha corrected, standing and tugging Bucky to his feet.

            “Fine,” he said sourly, making sure it was clear he was leaving under protest. He hadn’t slept since…well, he’d lost count, frankly, and his eyes were starting to cross, and the prospect of being in his own bed did sound like heaven.  It wasn't as if he couldn't fly out to wherever Tony was sighted as easily from New York as from DC, right? 

            But when they were in the car, on the highway driving north, sleep wouldn’t come, despite the hypnotizing noise of tires on pavement.  He didn’t want to think it, much less talk about it, but now that nothing was keeping Tony away but Tony himself, Bucky wondered if he even had the energy to keep looking anymore. Perhaps it was a habit, now, or maybe it was more like the way when you start running downhill, it’s almost impossible to stop without falling down.

            “Bucky, stop torturing yourself,” Tasha said, breaking the silence.  “I know you’re not sleeping.”

            “I don’t understand why he left,” Bucky said before he could stop himself, trying to throttle down a spike of anger.

            “Fear. When people are suddenly free of their abuser, the fear of the unknown can be overwhelming.  He probably just panicked, ok? When he remembers more, he’s going to go home, so you should be there when he does.”

            “How can you be so sure he’ll remember?”

             "If I said something about faith and the power of healing would you buy it?"

            "From you? No." He considered for a moment. "Well, maybe if I didn't know you and you were wearing yoga pants."

           “I do yoga," she protested, but Bucky just gave her a hard look. "There was a doctor that the Ten Rings kidnapped to treat Tony after he was injured in the ambush.  They kept him to monitor Tony for a while until Stane decided they didn’t need him anymore. But for whatever reason, instead of killing him they just erased his memories and dropped him back in his home village.” She gave him a significant look. “The Russian told us where to find him, and he was already recovering some of what he lost. He thought he was going crazy and remembering things that didn't happen."

            Bucky stared at her for a long moment.  “Are you…holy shit. That’s amazing.” He straightened and rubbed his hands over his face. “Ok. Great. So…time, we just need time.”

            “First you need sleep, though. I promise everything will seem better in the morning.”

 

            Bucky waved to Tasha as she drove away and dragged himself up the stairs to the building and into the elevator, barely making it to the couch before falling over.  He stared at the ceiling for a bit, trying to get up the energy to look for food and the TV remote, when he heard his phone chime.  Tasha texted, _I ordered you a pizza. ETA 30 min,_ and in that moment Bucky would have given her anything she wanted in gratitude, up to and including his arm or first born child if that ever happened.  The sound of the buzzer to the front of the building finally got him off the couch and the remote was discovered under the coffee table.

            After a few hours staring blankly at the television, watching increasingly improbable movies on the SyFy channel, Bucky finally fell into an exhausted sleep.  A soft knock woke him up, and a bleary look at his phone said it was three AM.  He was shuffling to the door on autopilot before he was awake enough to realize

            that

            only one person

_in the world_

            would be knocking on the door at three AM.

            He froze and his heart dropped to his feet, leaving a wash of cold in its wake. Then he heard footsteps walking away and he covered the rest of the distance to the door in a rush.

            “Tony!” He said as he threw open the door. In front of it, halfway turned like he was going back to the elevator, was in fact Tony. He was dressed in baggy jeans and an oversized hoodie, pulled up to cover his head and shade his face.  Looming next to the elevator doors was the suit, dark and menacing.  “Don’t-don’t go.”

            This time when Tony dragged his eyes up from the floor there was recognition in them, which made Bucky slump against the door frame with relief, but also wariness and shame. 

            _Shame._   Bucky took a ragged breath, eyes wet.  “Tony, please. Come back,” he said softly, and held his hand out. Tony stared at it for a moment before slinking closer and reaching out in hesitation. “Can - Can I give you a hug?”

            Tony nodded mutely and Bucky pulled him in close, wrapping his arms around him and wishing that he never had to let him go. “It’s going to be ok, sweetheart. I’m so glad you’re here, ok? I missed you so much.” A broken sob ripped its way out of Tony’s chest and his shoulders started shaking, hands fisted in the back of Bucky’s shirt. Bucky held him closer and let his own tears come. “What you did, it wasn’t your fault,” Bucky said, voice cracking. “I know it wasn’t you.  You’re home now, ok? You don’t have to fight anymore, I’ve got you.”

            Tony sagged in his arms and Bucky felt the wetness on his shirt.  “I’m so tired,” he whispered.

            “I know. But you’re home now, you can rest. Come on.” He wanted to pick Tony up and carry him so he wouldn’t have to let him go, but instead he slid his hand inside of Tony’s and led him to the bedroom, feeling his fingers curl around his own, the callouses on them new and unfamiliar.  “Let’s get some sleep, yeah?”

            Tony kicked his shoes off before falling into bed fully dressed, curling up right on top of the covers. Bucky turned to go get a blanket from the closet when he heard Tony say, “Please, stay.”

            “I’ll be right back,” Bucky promised, relieved. He hadn't been excited at the idea of letting Tony out of his sight; if Tony had wanted privacy, Bucky had been prepared to sleep in front of the bedroom door.

            When he got Tony settled into the bed, stilled covered from head to toe in the ragged clothes he refused to take off, Bucky didn’t know if he’d be able to sleep.  But Tony slowly inched over, hesitantly, until he was laying on Bucky’s shoulder, his body a long line of warmth against him, his leg a welcome weight when he threw it over Bucky’s.  Bucky had a few minutes to revel at Tony’s closeness, heart in his throat, then he was surprisingly out like a light.

 

            In the morning he woke up with a pulse of sheer panic until he turned his head and saw that Tony was still there, that he hadn’t been exhaustion-fueled dream.  Bucky rolled over carefully to watch him sleep, taking the time to study him in the soft light of the morning.  There were purple smudges under his eyes and stubble darkening his jaw, and his skin was unhealthily pale, especially given Tony’s normally swarthy complexion.  

            He was the most beautiful thing Bucky had ever seen.  Tasha was right, Bucky reflected.  Everything is better this morning.

            As much as he would have liked to stay there until Tony woke up to make sure that the recognition in his eyes last night was still there this morning, his bladder was insisting that there was no time for that.  He rolled carefully out of bed, leaving the door cracked behind him, and went to the bathroom.  When he was done, he washed his face and padded quietly back to the bedroom, where he was surprised to see Tony sitting up on the edge of the bed, looking lost.

            “Hey there,” Bucky said softly. “Good morning.”

            “Hey,” Tony said, glancing up from what he was staring at on the dresser.  Bucky came in to see what he was looking at.

            Oh.  He picked up the framed picture of the two of them, a housewarming present from his mom, and sat down next to Tony on the bed. In it Tony was giving him a kiss on the cheek while Bucky was laughing; Tony had just made a joke about carrying Bucky over the threshold while he was still 15% lighter than normal which made him the same weight as Tony. 

            “Were we…” Tony started, gesturing vaguely at the bed.

            “Lovers? Yeah,” Bucky said, taking a deep breath at the stab of pain in his chest.

            Tony was quiet for a second, then said, “I’m sorry.  That I don’t remember.”

            “It’s not your fault,” Bucky said with forced casualness, putting the photo back.

            “Oh, I know,” Tony said bitterly, staring at his hands.  “But I’m still sorry.”

            “You’ll probably start to remember things after a while,” he ventured.  “As your brain heals.”

            “Yeah?” Tony did not look as happy with that news as Bucky would have expected.   “But what about the stuff I don't want to remember?” Bucky opened his mouth but Tony shook his head and stood. “I’d like to take a shower now.”

            “Right, of course.” Bucky led him to the bathroom and handed him a towel from the closet.  “Shower is over there, but we also have this bathtub/swimming pool combo over here,” he said, pointing at the Jacuzzi tub.  “I’ll bring you some clothes.”  As he went back to the bedroom he heard the sound of water starting to fill up the tub.  He set Tony’s clothes on the bathroom counter and to keep himself from haunting the bathroom door until Tony came out, he busied himself by making breakfast.  After months of being out of the country, there was nothing edible in the refrigerator but there was still some waffles in the freezer and maple syrup never went bad, right? He also found an unopened bag of Tony’s favorite coffee, so it wasn’t too long that the smell of coffee was wafting through the apartment.

            Which is about when he noticed that Tony had been in the bathroom for a really long time. “Tony?” he said, knocking quietly.

            “Yeah,” he heard, and opened the door.  Tony had shaved and was staring at his face in the mirror.  Bucky realized that the reason why Tony had been wearing the hood was because his hair had been cut short, almost shaved completely off.

            “I look like a criminal,” Tony said roughly, running a hand over the stubble of his hair.

            Bucky had to admit, he did look a little like a mug shot. “Nah,” he said. “You look like it’s your first day in boot camp.”

            “But I _am_ a criminal.”

            “No. No you’re not,” Bucky said.  He put a hand on Tony’s shoulder and turned him gently to face him. “You didn’t do anything wrong, that wasn’t you.”

            “I killed Stane.  That was me, I did that. When you looked at me, after, you were...”

            As he watched Tony fidget with the hem of his shirt, one from an Iron Maiden concert that was worn and soft from repeated washings, Bucky felt lower than dirt. “I’m sorry. I don't know what I looked like, but don’t ever think that I think you’re a bad person, ok?” Tony nodded but still looked unconvinced, so Bucky pulled him gently into a hug.  “From the first day I saw you I thought you were the best person I have ever met and I still do.  Killing Stane wasn't a crime it was...it was a fucking moral imperative.  The only reason why I'm not more glad that you did it is because I wanted to do it.”  He ached to give Tony a kiss on his temple, on those downcast eyes, but he forced himself to take a step back.  “I made breakfast, if you’re hungry.”

            As Tony followed him into the kitchen, Bucky heard a sharp inhale. When he turned, Tony’s eyes were huge when he stared at the half-full coffee pot. “ _Coffee,_ ” he said, voice full of reverence. He started towards the pot like he was going to drink it right out of the carafe, so Bucky pushed a cup into his hands.

            “Please don’t tell me you haven’t had coffee since you left here.”  Stane had to have known how much Tony loved coffee; denying him that one simple pleasure somehow seemed like an extra bit of unnecessary cruelty.  Bucky's lips twitched in a mirthless smile; sure Obadiah Stane was a murderous psychopath, but he didn't have to be such a  _dick_ about it.

            “Well, let’s just say that I can’t remember the last time I had coffee,” Tony said dryly as he poured himself a cup.

            Tony took a seat at the kitchen table while Bucky finished plating their food, even finding some frozen fruit in the freezer that normally would have gone in one of Tony’s smoothies. Thawed out and piled on top of the waffles, it almost looked like something a healthy person would eat instead of the desperately cobbled together meal that it was.

            They ate in a companionable silence, a soft silence, and Bucky tried hard not to stare, still wanting to feast on the sight of Tony in their kitchen again, safe and sound.  He moved his leg under the table to rest against Tony’s and hid his delighted smile as Tony pressed against back slightly.

            But the moment was shattered when Bucky’s phone started vibrating against the countertop with a loud buzz, making Tony flinch so hard that he knocked his coffee cup off the table with a loud crash. Bucky dove for the phone to turn it off, tossing it on the table while he gathered Tony in his arms.

            “I got you, I’m so sorry. You’re ok,” he said soothingly while Tony trembled. “You’re home, you’re here with me, you’re safe. It was my phone, just my phone.”  After a long time he felt Tony’s body relax and the rapid, terrified breathing slowed. “I’m going to clean up the mess and get you more coffee, ok?” He waited for Tony’s nod to let him go and grab a towel.  When Tony’s hands were wrapped around a new mug like it was giving him life, Bucky checked his phone.

            He had two missed calls from an 800 number that he recognized; Lt Rhodes had been trying to call him from Afghanistan.  That broke the fragile bubble of solitude that Bucky had been enjoying all morning as he realized that he needed to make a lot of calls.  Staring down at his phone, he wondered helplessly if it really had to be done today.

            “What’s wrong?” Glancing up, he saw that Tony had been watching him.  He sat down heavily in the chair across from him and sighed.

            “I gotta call a bunch of people and tell them you're home.  Eventually it will hit the news, and then…” Bucky made a resigned gesture towards the window that faced to the street outside. “Chaos. But I want to keep you to myself for a while longer.”

            Tony looked out the window, drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his mug on them. He looked so vulnerable that Bucky’s chest ached.  “There were others looking for me?”

            “Yeah, of course. Other than me, there was your best friend, Rhodey, and your godmother, Peggy. Well, Aunt Peggy, to you.  My friend Tasha, she was there when…you know. At Stane’s house.  Rhodey was the one who just tried to call.  He was with you in Afghanistan when you were – were, um, kidnapped.”  It was hard to tell Tony about these things that happened to him under that carefully blank stare.

            “Ok. You should call them.” But Bucky didn’t miss how Tony seemed to withdraw a little more into himself when he said that, so Bucky waited until after they ate and cleaned up to go out on the balcony.

            He called Peggy first, watching Tony through the glass doors as he wandered around the house, touching things with gentle fingers. “What is it, Sergeant Barnes?” Peggy’s voice said crisply into his ear after only a few rings. “When I told you to get some rest, I didn’t mean a single night-“

            “Peggy, he’s here,” he said over her, smiling as Tony encountered Bite Size, picking the little bot up and studying it while the bot waved its pincer arm at him. “He showed up in the middle of the night last night.”

            There was a deep shaky breath on the other end of the line, then another.  Bucky could just imagine the face she was making now, her lips pressed together tightly as she tried to maintain that British stiff upper lip. “And how is he?” She asked finally.

            “Um, overall, doing really well.  A little fragile, emotionally; I got the sense that he’s not ready to talk to anyone just yet.  He still doesn’t remember much.”

            “You’re going to need to get him in to see a doctor.”

            “I know.” Bucky turned to lean against the railing, tapping his metal hand against it with a series of _tings_. “I know a neurologist, he’ll make house calls.  And…” Bucky didn’t really know how to say this because it sounded so weird.

            “And a heart surgeon because of the shrapnel in his chest,” Peggy finished.  “Remember, we found the doctor that did the initial surgery,” she added at his surprised silence.

            “That’s what the arc reactor is for? Shrapnel? I don’t understand.”

            “It’s attached to some kind of electromagnet that’s keeping the shrapnel from his heart.”

            “Oh."

            “But we’re also talking about a therapist for the trauma, you know. And a press release, Stark Industries is in a lot of turmoil right now-”

            “I get it, I get it.  Just…not today.”

            “Or tomorrow, I know,” she said gently. “He needs to feel safe first.”

            “Yeah.” Bucky leaned over to rest his forehead against the cool railing, already feeling a little overwhelmed.

            “I’ll help, of course.  I can come to see you when- when he’s ready, I suppose.”

            “That would be great.” Bucky still had a hard time imagining having Peggy over for Thanksgiving dinner, but by God the woman could get shit done.

            “Now try to get hold of Lt. Rhodes so he will leave me alone.”

            “Yes ma’am.”

            He couldn’t call James back directly because his cell phone wouldn’t connect to the military DSN network, but he sent him an email to call back as soon as possible and went inside to join Tony. 

            When James called back Tony was curled up on the couch watching _Mythbusters_ while Bucky was doing their grocery shopping online.  Bucky picked up the phone and went to the bedroom to answer, not wanting to disturb Tony while he looked so peaceful.

            “Hey James,” Bucky said, pitching his voice low so it wouldn’t carry.  “Peggy gave you the rundown of what happened?”

            “Yeah, and I saw some of the news reports. That shit looked wild.”

            “Oh yeah. And I thought Afghanistan had been tough,” Bucky said, remembering the huge black hole of that fifty cal when it had been pointed right at his face.

            “Still no word for Tony though?”

            “He’s here. He came home last night.”

            “Oh my God,” James said after a disbelieving silence. “Seriously?”

            “Yeah, he just…knocked on my door. At three AM.”

            “Thank God.” Bucky heard him put the phone down and there were some faint noises on the other end.  When he came back on the line, his voice sounded suspiciously unsteady. “He’s ok?”

            “Yeah. I mean, mostly.  You know.”  Anyone in the military understood that there were going to be degrees of ok with someone who came back from war, so he knew James would get what he meant.

            “Yeah.  I’d like to Skype or something with you guys at some point, ok? See his ugly mug for myself.”

            “Ok.  Probably not soon, though,” Bucky said honestly.  “He still doesn’t remember much.”

            “Yeah, ok. Just…whenever.” 

            When he went back out into the living room Tony had fallen asleep, so Bucky covered him with a blanket, and resisted the urge to watch him sleep by concentrating on buying enough food to sustain them for the foreseeable future.

 

            That night, Bucky woke up when Tony started thrashing and making noises in his sleep. “Tony?” Bucky said softly. “Wake up, you’re dreaming.”  After a moment Bucky turned on the bedside lamp and Tony woke up with a gasp, sitting up sharply, grasping his chest like he couldn’t breathe. “Are you ok?” Bucky went to put his hand on Tony’s back but Tony dodged it and got out of bed.

            “I just need some air,” he said, not looking at Bucky as he left the bedroom.  Bucky checked the time and ran a tired hand over his face.  After a moment he swung his legs out of bed and went to the bathroom.  When he was done he wandered by the balcony to see if Tony was ok, but the balcony was empty; eventually he found him in the kitchen, holding a knife and staring at the arc reactor in his chest, glowing brightly in the darkness of the kitchen.

            “Hey, Tony, sweetie, let’s put the knife down, ok?”

            “I want it out of me,” Tony said roughly, angrily. “They tricked me into building it and put it in when I was asleep so I would wake up not knowing any different.”

            “I understand, Tony. We’ll get it out, but there are doctors for that, ok? We’re not going to do it right here in the kitchen.  I’ll get you an appointment in the morning,” Bucky said, inching forward with his hands up.

            Tony looked up at Bucky and then back down at the knife in his hand. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he snapped.  “I was about to cut up an apple.”

            “Oh." Bucky put his hands down and cleared his throat. "Well, you had to admit it looked bad,” Bucky said sheepishly, digging through the fridge for something to drink to lessen the crushing embarassment

            “Every time I see it it’s a constant fucking reminder.  I had a dream that someone found whatever the hell the be- that Stane used to control it and they’re out there, pushing the buttons for fun.” Tony stabbed into the apple angrily, until Bucky held his hand out for the knife.

            “Less likely to cut a finger off by accident,” Bucky pointed out, waggling his fingers.

            “Forget it,” Tony said, throwing the knife in the sink and biting into the apple as he turned away.

            “Hey, I’m sorry,” Bucky said, putting a hand on his shoulder to draw him back.  “Look, I can’t imagine what it’s like, to carry around something like that with you all the time.  But we can get it fixed, we _will_ , and there might be a scar as a different kind of reminder but at least it will be something that you chose. Maybe afterwards you can get a tattoo or something.”

            Tony relented and let Bucky pull him into a hug, resting his head on Bucky’s shoulder.  He sighed heavily, shoulders slumping. “More _Mythbusters?_ ”

            “Sure, more _Mythbusters._ ” This time Bucky joined Tony on the couch, freezing for a moment when Tony rested his head on Bucky's thigh, but after a few moments he was able to relax. They sat in silence for a while, staring at the TV but Bucky suspected neither of them were really watching. Then out of nowhere Tony said, "I built those robots, didn't I?"

            "Yeah.  The little one is Bite Size and the big one in the corner of the dining room is DUM-E.  There's also an AI called JARVIS that you put in this apartment, he's voice activated."

            "What do they do?"

            "Um, nothing and everything? I don't think you made them for a particular reason, you just wanted to.  Well, ok, Bite Size and DUM-E helped you out in the lab sometimes, and you put JARVIS in here to help me before you finished my arm.  He can control the lights, the temperature, look up things, call people...just general stuff." Bucky trailed off because Tony was staring at him in disbelief, like he couldn't imagine building something just for the fun of it.  But he didn't say anything else, he just turned back to the TV and hugged the blanket a little closer around him. 

 

            The next day was relatively peaceful, punctuated only by the doctors that came to examine Tony.  The day after that Tony seemed even more relaxed, but Bucky was starting to feel the pressure of the outside world waiting to invade the quiet peace of their sanctuary, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.  The morning after that Bucky woke up after a restless sleep and shuffled into the kitchen to find Tony waiting by the coffee pot, watching it as it burbled and hissed and streamed coffee into the carafe.  When there was enough for a cup, Tony pulled out the carafe and filled up his cup, heedless of the drips that hit the hot plate and sizzled.  "Thank you, Jesus," Tony murmured when he wrapped his hands around the cup.

            For a moment, Bucky's heart leapt.  "Did you remember that?" he asked casually, pulling another cup out of the cabinet.

            "Remember what?" 

            Bucky hid his disappointment as he poured some coffee for himself. "That the coffee maker was named Jesus. Sometimes I wondered if you loved the coffee maker more than you loved me."

            "Impossible," Tony said automatically, and when Bucky glanced over there was a glint in his eye that made a giddy warmth spread through Bucky's limbs. "He's not nearly as nice to look at as you are."

            "But I don't make coffee," Bucky pointed out with a smothered grin. 

            Tony looked thoughtful for a moment, then glanced pointedly at Bucky's metal arm.  "I bet I could fix that," and just like that Bucky forgot himself as he laughed and leaned over to press a kiss against Tony's smiling mouth, an instinct as natural as breathing. 

            Lightning shot through Tony's body at the brief contact, and he made an involuntary noise. When Bucky pulled back, his look of concern quickly grew heated as his eyes dipped down to where Tony was licking his lips. After a breathless moment, though, Bucky pulled away.

            "I'm sorry," Bucky said, his voice low and velvety, making heat drip down Tony's spine. He tore his eyes away from Tony's mouth to look down at his coffee cup.

            "Don't be."  Tony gathered his courage and said, "You should do it again."

            "Yeah?" When Tony nodded, Bucky set his coffee down and cradled Tony's face with his hand, running his thumb over the seam of Tony's lips, following the earlier path of his tongue. "Believe me, I want to.  So much." Tony smiled and bit the pad of his thumb lightly, making Bucky groan. " _So_  much. But until you remember me, it would feel too much like I was taking advantage."

            That made Tony scowl. "How long have we known each other?"

            "Uh, a year. Jeez, almost a year exactly," Bucky said, thinking about what day it was.  Would it be worth it to celebrate an anniversary only one party remembered?

            "And how long did we know each other before we slept together?"

            Bucky felt his face get red.  "Um...two days."

            "Must have been an eventful two days," Tony said with an arched eyebrow, smiling as Bucky squirmed.

            "Well it was certainly an eventful few nights, that's for sure."  

            "And how long has it been this time?" Tony took Bucky's other hand, the metal one, and kissed the palm before pressing his cheek against it, feeling the borrowed warmth of the coffee cup.  "You tell me that I was a person who used to build things for fun, that I loved it.  I don't remember that, and maybe one day I will be that person again, but not today. But I can also see that I was a person who was your lover, and I  _can_ be that person today, I  _want_ to.  Maybe," and now it was Tony's turn to feel his face get hot, but he forced himself to say what he'd been thinking about when he woke up this morning to see Bucky sprawled next to him in bed. "Maybe this is just giving me a chance to fall in love with you all over again."

            "Jesus," Bucky breathed, looking torn. He pulled Tony in close, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in Tony's neck.  His breath was warm across Tony's collarbones as he sighed a little shakily. Tony put his arms around him as well and rested his cheek against his hair.

            "Leave the coffee maker out of this," Tony said, and he felt more than heard Bucky's laugh. 

            "God, I love you," Bucky said as he lifted his head. “You aren’t even trying and you’re still a menace.  Driving me crazy must just be part of the Tony Stark basic programming.”

            Tony just tilted his head up so their lips grazed, breath mingling. “So kiss me it again,” he murmured, looking into Bucky's grey eyes, so close to his own. Though Bucky was holding him loosely in his arms, he could still feel the warm press of his body and he wanted more, so much more, so he slid his hands under the edge of Bucky's shirt to get bare skin under his palms. 

            When he did that, Bucky made a sound that he liked, so Tony slid his hands up Bucky’s back, tracing the dip of his lower spine, kneading the thick muscles.

            Bucky’s eyes slid closed on a low groan. “Alright, but we’re going to take it slow,” he rumbled, pulling him in close enough that Tony could feel how hard he was already, which made him shiver.  “And you tell me the moment you need to stop or slow down.”  He pressed a kiss to the corner of Tony’s mouth, then his cheekbone, then at the spot right below Tony’s ear, exhaling hotly against his throat.

            “I may not know me very well, but even I think 'slow' doesn’t sound like me,” Tony argued breathlessly, arching his neck and shuddering when Bucky bit it lightly. He scraped his blunt nails down Bucky’s sides and slipped his fingers into the waistband of his sweatpants.

            “No, but how many people get to have a second first time together?” Bucky pointed out, capturing his hands and walking backwards towards their bedroom, tugging Tony along while his gaze raked Tony hotly from head to toe, lingering on the jut of his erection through his thin cotton pants.  “Especially since I already know your favorite things?”

            “And then I get to relearn your favorite things? You can either show me what you like or I can figure it out by trial and error.” Whatever went through Bucky’s mind at that must have been good, because his hands tightened around Tony’s and he exhaled long and low, eyes dark..

            “It’s a deal,” he said thickly. “Now get naked.” When Tony’s hands hesitated at the hem of his tank top, Bucky cupped a hand around Tony’s neck and tilted his chin up with his thumb. “Hey, despite your best efforts, I still have a lot of scarring around my shoulder.  If that’s what you’re afraid of, don’t be. I know we’ve both been through some shit, and scars are just reminders that we survived.”

            Tony wasn’t really convinced, given the way Bucky had looked when he first learned that the arc reactor was a part of him now, but he let Bucky draw his tank top over his head and slide his pants over his hips. Bucky ran the back of his metal hand up the hot, hard line of Tony’s cock and the sensation made Tony weak at the knees.  He sat down heavily on the side of the bed, which put his head almost level of Bucky’s own erection; the small damp spot on the sweatpants marking the tip of Bucky’s cock was too tempting, so he put his mouth on it, tongue flicking out to add to the wetness.

            “Fuck,” Bucky swore, hips instinctively moving towards the heat of Tony’s mouth.  He put his hands on Tony’s shoulders as Tony dragged his mouth down the length of his cock, bringing his own hands up to grip Bucky’s hips, pressing his thumbs into the divots below his hipbones.  “Christ, as much as I want to keep doing this, it would be the opposite of going slow,” he said roughly, stripping off his own shirt and urging Tony farther up the bed before he took off his pants.  Tony looked at the thick length between Bucky’s legs as he crawled towards Tony, the shininess at the tip, and he unconsciously licked his lips.

            Bucky made another sound deep in his chest and finally slid his mouth over Tony’s, running his tongue over his bottom lip until he parted his lips and let Bucky inside. While they kissed Bucky settled himself over Tony, positioning himself between his knees and bracing his weight with his elbows by Tony’s head. “Is this ok?” he asked.

            “Better than,” Tony said. He felt pinned but in a good way; maybe more like anchored, when he felt like he was flying apart from the dizzying rush of sensations.  The heat of Bucky’s body, the slickness of his mouth and the teasing roughness of his teeth against Tony’s bottom lip, and especially the way his hips were rocking against Tony’s, were all making him lose his mind.

            Tony made a small sound of loss when Bucky pulled away and he felt the shape of Bucky’s smile against his throat.  “You know, your mouth was the first thing I noticed about you when we met.  I barely heard what you said because I was too busy watching your mouth move, and when I saw you smile, I wanted to know what that smile tasted like,” he murmured against Tony’s throat.  “Then I saw your eyes with those thick eyelashes, making it look like you were wearing eyeliner.  They smiled at me too, and I think just like that, I was gone for you.”

            Tony let his head fall back against the pillow with a groan, sliding his fingers into Bucky’s thick dark hair as his mouth licked and nipped along Tony’s collarbone, tongue pressing into the dip at the base of his throat.  While his mouth went to work on a nipple, licking it to hardness and then biting it lightly, his fingers traced the seam along the edge of the arc reactor.  Tony shivered at the influx of sensations, surprised that the skin near the arc reactor was so sensitive.  Bucky raised an eyebrow when he saw the goosebumps break out on Tony’s skin, then he moved to do it with the cool metal of the left hand, watching the red flush crawl down Tony’s chest. 

            "Then I saw you in one of those tank tops you like, showing off these shoulders and biceps, and you made my mouth water."  Then he bit Tony's deltoid hard enough to sting, countering the sensation by circling Tony's other nipple with his thumb and flicking it gently.  Tony tugged on Bucky’s hair and then it was his turn to see Bucky shiver with pleasure; he wanted to pull Bucky up for another kiss, but apparently Bucky had _plans_ because kept moving down Tony’s body, long hair brushing the skin of his abdomen and making it quiver.

            Bucky gave him one heated glance as he bit the jut of Tony’s hip bone, then his eyes closed as he licked the gathered precome off the tip of Tony’s cock.  Tony make a rough noise and his hips surged, but Bucky pressed them back down as he closed his mouth around him and slid almost all the way down Tony’s length, trapping it between his tongue and the roof of his mouth.  Tony cursed and almost arched off the bed when Bucky’s cheeks hollowed with suction, held in place by Bucky’s hands on his hips.  As Bucky’s mouth moved up and down, hot and wet, keeping an incredible pressure on his cock, the coil of tension kept building at the base of his spine until Tony was chanting “ _fuck,_ Bucky, just like that, _Christ_.” His thighs were clenched tight around Bucky’s shoulder, tensing rhythmically with the need to thrust. Then Bucky slid his left hand under Tony’s ass and he pressed his metal thumb against his hole. The shock of the coolness against the sensitive rim, the slightest bit of pressure against it, was what tipped Tony over the edge;  he had no idea what sounds he was making as bliss flooded his limbs, making colors flash behind his eyelids.  Bucky’s mouth stayed on him while he came, the movement of his mouth as he swallowed almost too much on Tony’s oversensitive cock. When Tony finally went limp Bucky pulled away and reached for something in the nightstand drawer.

            “Christ, hearing you come makes me _so hot_ ,” he growled, lube making his hands shiny as he spread it on his cock, stroking the hard length of it while his gaze raked over Tony, eyes hot and pupils blown.  “Can I-“

            “Whatever you want,” Tony said, hands coming up to stroke Bucky’s cock as well as he leaned over to give Tony a rough kiss.

            Bucky wiped his hands off on the sheets and lay down beside Tony, urging him onto his side and then plastering himself to Tony’s back. He wrapped his arms around Tony, pulling him against his chest, and buried his face in Tony’s neck as he slid his slicked cock between Tony’s thighs.  Tony got the picture quickly as Bucky began to thrust, first squeezing his thighs together, then crossing his legs.

            “Fuck, _yes_ ,” Bucky said at the increased tightness around his cock, breath ragged. He pressed his mouth against the back of Tony’s neck, teeth nipping at the nape as he thrust.  Tony closed his eyes and moaned at the sensation of Bucky moving behind him, hips rolling as his arms held Tony close. He reached back and curled his hand around Bucky’s thigh, making more noises as Bucky started moving faster, the slight friction of his cock against the sensitive skin of his inner thighs sending sparks up and down Tony’s spine despite his recent orgasm.

            Tony turned his head and arched his back slightly so he could have Bucky’s mouth on his again, wanting to taste the moans that Bucky was making.  Tony bit his lip and Bucky made a broken moan as his rhythm grew erratic; Tony fisted his hand in Bucky’s hair and pulled hard, drawing a sharp grunt out of him.  Bucky’s hand was tight on his hip as he thrust hard and then he arched his back and came with a loud groan, spilling hot and wet on Tony’s thighs.

            When Bucky was done shuddering behind him, Tony rolled over, heedless of the mess, and pulled Bucky on top of him, wanting to feel that warm weight again. Bucky’s breath was warm and his lips were soft as he pressed them against Tony’s shoulder, carefully not to put too much weight on the arc reactor but otherwise content to be Tony’s blanket.

            “See, that was slow, right?” Tony said, hand sliding down to squeeze Bucky’s firmly muscled ass, smacking it lightly. 

            Bucky huffed out a laugh. “Not as slow as I wanted, but as slow as I could manage,” he said, running his hand down Tony’s side lazily, as far as he could reach, and then back up again.  “I can go slower. I _have_ gone slower,” and there was a note in his voice that made Tony quiver inside and his cock give a twitch of interest, like his body remembered something his mind did not.

            “Next time?” Tony said hopefully.

            “I think we need to work up to _that_ kind of slow or we might kill ourselves. We’ve both been out of the game for a while,” Bucky pointed out.  Then he kissed the tip of Tony’s nose and levered himself off the bed grimacing a bit at the cold sticky feeling of cooling come.  “First, let's shower.”

***

            In the end, the timing of Tony’s reintroduction to the outside world was taken out of their hands.  One day an enterprising paparazzo with a telephoto lens got a picture of him sitting on the balcony, drinking coffee with his face tilted towards the sun, and then by evening it was all over the news.

            Bucky was scrolling through one of the articles when Peggy called, almost right on schedule. “Probably time to make that press release now.  Think he’s ready?”

            “I guess he’ll have to be, right?  We’ve already talked to Stark Industries’ public relations department, they’re putting together a statement and have a press conference ready for tomorrow.”  He glanced over at where Tony was eating soup and doing something on Bucky’s laptop, brow furrowed in concentration.

            “I’m coming up tonight.  The reporters are going to be ravenous for a story and he’ll need all the reinforcements he can get.”

            Luckily Lt. Rhodes had returned from his deployment and was available to open the conference with a statement about the ambush, mostly recapping everything the press already knew from the media circus surrounding Stark’s initial disappearance.  When James stepped away from the podium to let Tony take over, the murmuring from the crowd became noticeably louder.

            “This was a bad idea,” Bucky said, biting his lip as he watched Tony in front of the crowd, pale and sweating, standing there with his chin up like he was expecting a blow. “He’s not ready.”

            “He’s done a million of these,” James said unconvincingly.  “He’s just going to read off the statement, answer a few questions, then we are out.”

            The crowd grew quiet when Tony started to talk.  The flat, matter of fact delivery of the kidnapping and his time with Stane made the events of the past year seem unreal, like he was reading the plot to a movie. If it wasn’t for his subdued manner and the fact that his hair hadn’t even grown out long enough to require styling, it was hard to see what he’d been through.

            With his shirt on, at least. The arc reactor was still a cheerfully glowing reminder of his captivity, but the news of Tony's return had played havoc with scheduling the surgery, since Tony would be out of commission for weeks while he healed.

            Tony finished reading the statement and looked out over the crowd, eyes shuttered. “I will now take some questions.”

            A young blonde reporter stood up in the front and managed to shout louder than the rest, so Tony gestured for her to speak. “So are we to understand that you used a similar version of the suit Stane was wearing in order to kill him, yes?”

            Tony raised an eyebrow. “That is a simplistic summary of the events–“

            “So, yes.  My question is, if you had access to this suit for some time, why didn’t you escape sooner?”

            Bucky stood up angrily as Tony somehow went even paler and swayed, hands tightening on the podium. James grabbed his arm before Bucky could storm the stage. “What kind of victim blaming bullshit is this?” Bucky hissed as James pulled him back into his seat. “I can’t believe-“

            “Let him handle it,” James said firmly.  On stage, Tony was staring at the woman, jaw tight and eyes steady.

            “Every minute I was there I was afraid for my life, afraid that some real or imagined infraction would lead to punishment or death,” Tony said after a moment and the crowd went completely silent.  The woman looked triumphant as she pointed her microphone towards Tony to record his answer. “The room that I was confined to was my whole world, the only world I remembered. So the truth is, until Sergeant Barnes and the other brave agents of SHIELD found me, I didn’t even consider escaping to be a possibility.  Unless you’ve been there, unless you’ve been under the complete control of someone that violent, that immoral, you’ll never understand what I mean when I say that.  And you should be grateful for your ignorance.”

            As the woman sat down, triumphant look fading as the people sitting next to her leaned away, Tony looked out over the gathered journalists. “Any other tactless questions?” he asked.  “I’m sure there are other ways one could imply that this was my fault. Perhaps you should ask what I was wearing, or if I had been drinking at the time. No? Ok. I’m done.  You can direct any further questions to Stark Industries’ public relations. Except you,” he said, pointing to the woman who asked the question. “You can go straight to hell.”

            Tony stalked off the stage so quickly that Bucky and James had to jog to keep up.  The spell of shamed silence was broken as he left the stage, and they would have crowded Tony as he tried to leave but they were held at bay by the steely gaze of Director Carter, flanked by Nick Fury and Tasha.

            Tony cornered the unsuspecting SI public relations liaison who was waiting by the exit, scrolling through something on her phone. “Who has been running Stark Industries since Stane died?” he barked.

            She jumped in surprise but said, “That would be the Chief Operations Officer, John – “

            “Call him. I want to set up a meeting right now.”

            Tony started to leave, probably more angry than Bucky had ever seen him in his life, when the lady said, “Call him, _please,_ ” to Tony’s back.  Tony stopped, shoulders tight, and he walked backwards until he was facing her again.  Her eyes were wide and her lips pressed together tightly like she couldn’t believe what she just said, but she didn’t back down.

            “Don’t you work for me?” Tony said incredulously.

            “And? One of the richest men in America and you can’t afford to be polite?”

            Tony’s face broke into a smile, and the woman looked even more nervous. “What’s your name?”

            “Virginia Potts.”

            “And what is your position at Stark Industries?”

            “Public relations account manager.”

            “Not anymore.” Virginia turned an interesting shade of pale green at that. “Now, you’re my personal assistant. Come with me, and will you – _please-_ call John whoever to set up a meeting?”

            Then Tony was off again, and Virginia Potts was staring at Bucky and James like they were going to be able to explain what just happened, and when they shrugged in unison she hurried after Tony.

            “Guess he had to get mad to get motivated?” James said as they wandered along in Tony’s wake.

            “Never underestimate the power of spite, I guess.”

***

            A month later, there was a buzz as a delivery man stood at their back door, waiting impatiently with his clipboard.  Turns out, the LA County Sheriff's department had finally closed the case on Stane and had delivered Tony's lab equipment as well as some things that, for some reason, Stane had left him in his will.

            They both stared at the delivery checklist and the mountain of items piled in the corner of the garage. "Guess he never changed his will after he, um, kidnapped you?" Bucky said eventually, baffled.  Tony just turned on his heel and walked away, shoving the checklist into Bucky's hand to deal with. 

***

            Three months after that, Bucky, Tony, and Rhodey were having dinner in Bucky's favorite hole in the wall Vietnamese restaurant.  Rhodey and Bucky were bitching about the military while Tony stabbed at his noodles with a thoughtful frown on his face.  About halfway through dinner Tony suddenly sat back with a sharp inhale.  He met Rhodey's eyes and in them was a revelation.

            "Rhodey," he breathed.  "Holy shit."  Sometimes Tony's memories came back like this, like a flip in his brain just switched on and they all came flooding back.

            Rhodey stared at him for a moment, then he smiled like sunrise. "Yeah, Tony. It's me, Rhodey."

            Tony grinned back and for a moment Bucky was so happy it hurt.  Then Tony went back to his food, and while Rhodey's eyes lingered for a moment on Tony he eventually turned back to continue his conversation with Bucky.

            Until Tony announced calmly, "I'm going to give you a suit."  The silence that followed that statement seemed stronger than a usual silence, like it managed to muffle the noise from the rest of the restaurant.  Bucky and Rhodey both stared; the suits had become increasingly controversial as the government argued that they represented too much power to be in the hands of a private individual and been trying to force Stark Industries to turn them over.  Bucky knew that the military was practically begging Tony to sell them some, but Tony had so far refused to even consider building a new one.  When Stane's model arrived at Stark industries, Tony had ordered it dismantled and melted down while his own black one was still standing silent and empty in the corner of Tony's all but abandoned lab.

            He looked up to meet their stunned gazes. "I don't...I can't even think about getting inside the suit again without having cold sweats.  I'll keep it, in case of emergencies, but I trust you, Rhodey.  You could do a lot of good things with it, so I'm going to build you one.  You,  _personally_ ," Tony emphasized.  "Not the Air Force. They can order it around only to the extent that they can order you around, but if they try to take it from you, have them call our legal department."

            "Yeah. Ok. That's cool," Rhodey said.  "If that's what you want," as if he hadn't made cow eyes at it the one time Bucky took him to the lab to show it to him. Bucky narrowed his eyes at him as Rhodey turned back to his dinner, conspicuously casual.

            "So what are you going to call it?" Bucky asked off-handedly, acting on a hunch.

            "War Machine," Rhodey said instantly, without thinking.  Bucky laughed as his face went ruddy, and even Tony cracked a smile at Rhodey's chagrin.

            "The news are calling them Iron Man suits," Tony said, making a face. "Which is ridiculous," he added, just as Bucky was thinking to himself that that was kind of a cool name. "They're actually made of a gold-titanium alloy."

            "Yeah, but Gold-Titanium Alloy Man is a bit awkward, don't you think? Doesn't even make a good acronym," Bucky pointed out as he dipped his spring roll in peanut sauce and took a bite.  He glanced up to see Tony looking at him.  "What?" he said around his mouthful.

            "Marry me," Tony blurted.  "It's legal in Massachusetts. I checked."

            Bucky swallowed with difficulty and put the spring roll down, acutely aware of Rhodey watching them with wide eyes.  "It's also legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, and Spain, all of which are nicer than Massachusetts. I checked."

            "So is that a yes?" Tony said hopefully. "Crappy memory and all?"

            "Of course it's a yes," Bucky said with a crooked grin, leaning over to give him a kiss. "But we're making up a different story if anyone asks how we got engaged."

            Rhodey snorted. "If y'all's story got any more melodramatic they'd have to make a Lifetime movie around it, so just embrace the banal for now, yeah?  Try to be boring for a while, if only for your old pal Rhodey."


End file.
